Postal Service

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Madam President, let me begin by thanking Senator Tester not only for being on the floor today but for working on the issue of making sure that in 50 States in this country--in rural America and in urban America--we continue to have a Postal Service of which the American people are proud. I wish to acknowledge Senator Baldwin, who is presiding, for her strong work on this issue, as well.

I represent one of the most rural States in America. I don't know if it is more rural than Montana, but it is very rural. Most of our people live in very small towns. The local post office is not just the place to pick up mail or to mail letters. It is a symbol of what the town is about. It is an institution that identifies the town. It is where people come together. It is a very important part of rural America.

We have been battling on this issue now for a number of years. As Senator Tester will remember, it wasn't so many years ago when the Postmaster General came up with a proposal that would have led to the shutting down of 15,000 mostly rural post offices all over America. To my mind, that was a disastrous proposal. Many of us stood up and fought back and worked something out. While the compromise was not all that I wanted, at least it prevented the shutdown of 15,000 post offices all over this country.

Right now--and I think Senator Tester made this point--the Postal Service has announced that beginning next month, it will be shutting down up to 82 mail processing plants. Those are the plants that move the mail along into areas all over the country. They also want to abolish overnight delivery standards and first-class mail. In the process, at a time when we need to create decent-paying jobs, this proposal would eliminate up to 15,000 good-paying, middle-class jobs at the Postal Service.

The reason Senator Tester and I and hopefully others have come to the floor today is to send a very loud and clear message to the Postmaster General, to our colleagues here in the Senate, to our colleagues in the House, and to the President of the United States. The message is that at a time when the middle class is disappearing and the number of Americans living in poverty is almost at an alltime high, do not destroy decent-paying jobs at the Postal Service. At a time when the Postal Service is competing with the instantaneous communication of emails and of high speed Internet, do not slow down mail delivery service, but speed it up. Do not dismantle the Postal Service by shutting down up to a quarter of the mail processing plants that are left in this country.

On August 14, I was delighted to work with Senator Tester and others on a letter to the Appropriations Committee, urging them to include language in the omnibus appropriations bill or the continuing resolution to prevent the Postal Service from making these devastating cuts and protecting these 15,000 jobs and these 82 processing plants. I am happy to say that a majority of the Members of the Senate--51 of them, including Majority Leader Reid, Senator Durbin, Senator Schumer, and six Republicans--Senator Hatch, Senator Inhofe, Senator Hoeven, Senator Blunt, Senator Thune, and Senator Collins--all signed on to this letter. They understand--many of them coming from rural areas--that this is not a Republican issue or a Democratic issue; this is an issue to protect mail delivery all over this country and especially in rural areas.

Shortly after we sent our letter, 160 Members of the House signed on to a similar letter calling for a 1-year moratorium to stop these mail processing plants from closing, and 23 Republicans signed that letter as well. So we are seeing bipartisan support in the House and in the Senate saying loudly and clearly: Do not shut down 82 processing plants; do not slow down mail delivery service; do not eliminate 15,000 decent-paying jobs.

I know Senator Mikulski, the chair of the Appropriations Committee, wants to see this happen, but to make it happen, she needs Republican support. I very much urge my Republican colleagues to stand up for rural America, stand up for 15,000 jobs. Let's protect these 82 processing plants.

As Senator Tester has made clear, the beauty of the Postal Service is that it provides universal service 6 days a week to every corner of America--no matter how small or how remote. It supports millions of jobs in virtually every other sector of our economy. It provides decent-paying union jobs to some 500,000 Americans, and, in fact--and I say this as the chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs--it is the largest single employer of veterans. Whether one is a low-income elderly woman living at the end of a dirt road in Pennsylvania or Vermont or a wealthy CEO on Wall Street, people get their mail 6 days a week.

The American people, by the way, pay for this service at a cost far, far less than anywhere else in the industrialized world. But if Congress doesn't stop the Postmaster General from making these devastating cuts, it will drive more Americans away from the Postal Service and will lead to what we call a death spiral. The quality of service deteriorates, fewer people use the Postal Service, less revenue comes in, and the process continues to deteriorate.

Despite what some in this country have been hearing in the media, and despite what some in the Postal Service have been saying, the Postal Service is not going broke. We hear that every three months--people telling us the Postal Service is going broke. That is not true. The major reason the Postal Service is in bad financial shape today is because of a mandate signed into law by President George W. Bush in December 2006, during a lameduck session of Congress, that forces the Postal Service to prefund 75 years of future retiree health benefits over a 10-year period. This burden is unprecedented in any other government agency or any private sector company in the United States of America. It is a burden that every single year costs the Postal Service $5.5 billion, and that one provision--that one provision--is responsible for all of the financial losses posted by the Postal Service since October 2012--just that one provision.

Over the past 2 years, the Postal Service has made an operating profit of nearly $1 billion. Let me repeat that. Over the past 2 years, the Postal Service has made an operating profit of nearly $1 billion, excluding this prefunding mandate that must be gotten rid of. Further, before this prefunding mandate was signed into law, the Postal Service was also profitable. In fact, from 2003 to 2006, the Postal Service made a combined profit of more than $9 billion. So when we hear that the Postal Service is in financial difficulty, the key reason--the overwhelming reason--is this onerous, unprecedented burden of coming up with $5.5 billion every year to pay for future health retirees.

Given the improved financial condition of the Postal Service, it makes no sense to me to close down mail plants, destroy jobs, and slow mail delivery. Our job right now is to make the Postal Service an agency that functions efficiently in the 21st century. We have to give them the tools to effectively compete. But the way we do that is not by cutting, cutting, and cutting. That is a path toward disaster.

So I hope the Members of the Senate and the Members of the House of Representatives will stand together and prevent these 82 processing plants from shutting down and come up with some legislation which expands the capability of the Postal Service to compete and protects the American people who want high quality Postal Service.

With that, I yield the floor to the Senator from Wisconsin, Ms. Baldwin.

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