By Tom Curry, msnbc.com National Affairs Writer
Updated at 3:05pm ET
The Senate struggled Thursday to push forward a bill to restructure the
U.S. Postal Service, but still lacked accord on which amendments the
senators would be allowed to offer.
“We’re really very, very close
to getting something done,” said Majority Leader Harry Reid Thursday
afternoon. “Our main issue now is whether there will be a 50-vote hurdle
or a 60-vote hurdle,” he said.
The Postal Service is headed for
financial collapse and perhaps for a taxpayer bailout. Whether Congress
can avert this outcome and save it is the question that the Senate has
been debating this week as it considers a bipartisan agency
restructuring bill.
Reid warned on the Senate floor Thursday, “Those of you who are
holding up the bill because you don’t like it, you may not like what the
result of having no bill is.”
He also said, “If there is no bill, the post office will be drastically hit.”
Reid
and his colleagues face a deadline: the Postal Service has agreed to a
moratorium on closing any postal retail facilities until May 15, to
allow Congress time to devise a way to resuscitate an enterprise that,
if it were in the private sector, would be on the brink of bankruptcy or
liquidation.
Win Mcnamee / Getty Images
Sen.
Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., seen in this February 2012 file photo, said it
was "unthinkable" that the Postal Service could cease operation.
If
Congress does not act by that deadline, the postmaster general will
close more than 200 mail processing plants and take other cost-cutting
steps.
But there’s discord among senators over what “saving” the
Postal Service would really mean, whether it’s worth saving, and whether
small towns from Maine to Montana will lose the post offices that serve
as their community anchors.
“Its failure would deliver a crushing
blow to our economy at a time when the economy is already fragile and
it would be particularly harmful to people living and working in rural
America,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, the chief Republican
co-sponsor of the restructuring bill.
The legislation’s other
chief sponsor, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent who
caucuses with Democrats, said, “This bill will keep the Postal Service
alive and I think it will keep it well and put it on the path to
surviving forever – but in a different way …”
Noting that the
Postal Service still delivers 563 million pieces of mail each day,
Lieberman said it was “unthinkable” that it could cease operation,
calling it “not just a relic of the 18
th century but a pivotal part of the 21
st century.”
Related: Save Postal Service! No, don’t! Readers weigh in
The
Lieberman-Collins bill would use an $11 billion refund from Federal
Employee Retirement system to offer buyouts of up to $25,000 to postal
workers. Half of the Postal Service workforce of 557,000 employees is
eligible for full or early retirement, Lieberman said. If 100,000 were
to retire, the Postal Service would save $8 billion a year.
The
bill also relaxes the tight schedule for Postal Service payments into a
fund for retiree health care, easing its cash flow problem. And for at
least two years, it would halt the end of Saturday mail delivery, as
other cost-cutting measures were implemented.
Action on the bill
was temporarily derailed when Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., tried on Tuesday to
get a vote on an amendment to the postal bill aimed at cutting off U.S.
aid to Egypt unless Cairo ends prosecution of American citizens
pursuing pro-democracy action in the African nation.
Leaders of
each party were working to reach a deal to allow votes on a limited
number of amendments to the legislation. If there’s no deal on
amendments, there will be a vote to move ahead on the bill Thursday
morning and Republicans might block it if they can’t get the chance to
vote on amendments they want.
Although Cairo, Egypt is long way from Cairo, Kentucky, Paul defended his effort to get a floor vote on his amendment.
Mark Wilson / Getty Images
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., speaks at a news conference on the 2013 budget March 8, 2012 in Washington, DC.
“I was never preventing any action (on the postal bill). I just want a
15-minute vote,” he told reporters on Wednesday. The Postal Service, he
said “is losing $4 billion a year and I think the American people would
like to know why we’re sending money to Egypt when we can’t fund our
own enterprises in this country.”
According to a report issued
Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s fiscal
watchdog, transactions at postal retail facilities have decreased by 18
percent over the past five years, while mail volume has declined by more
than 20 percent. In fiscal year 2011, the Postal Service had a $5.1
billion loss and did not make its $5.5 billion retiree health benefits
payment to the federal government.
“Approximately 80 percent of
its retail facilities do not generate sufficient revenue to cover their
costs,” the GAO reported, yet “the number of USPS-operated retail
facilities, about 32,000, has remained largely unchanged” over the past
five years.
An opponent of the Lieberman-Collins bill, Sen. John
McCain, R- Ariz., said, “It is very clear that Congress and the Postal
Service cannot make decisions.” The only solution, he said, would be an
independent commission (akin to the Base Realignment and Closure
Commission which closed military bases) to shut down redundant or
money-losing facilities.
Mocking the Lieberman-Collins bill’s
two-year study of cost control measures before eliminating Saturday mail
delivery, McCain said sarcastically during Tuesday’s floor debate,
“Now isn’t that marvelous! Two years to study! It’s delaying what is
absolutely necessary and that is to have five-day-a-week delivery.”
Illustrating
the home-state concerns felt by almost all senators on closing postal
facilities, Collins passionately defended a mail processing center in
Hampden, a town in northern Maine. Closing it would mean that a letter
sent from one town in northern Maine to another town just ten miles away
would take a 600-mile roundtrip, she said.
“That (Hampden) plant could be downsized, but it should never be closed” she insisted.
Karen Bleier / AFP - Getty Images
Senator
Susan Collins, R-Maine, is seen during the Senate Interior, Environment
and Related Agencies Subcommittee hearing in this June 23, 2010 file
photo on Capitol Hill.
NBCPolitics.com asked Collins
Wednesday whether her die-hard defense of Hampden didn’t precisely
illustrate the problem – few senators or House members are willing to
allow a facility in his or her state or district to be closed -- so few
are ever shuttered.
“The problem is there are (under current law)
not (legal) standards when a center or a post office should be closed,”
she explained. The Lieberman-Collins bill would set such standards. “Our
bill does not say that not a single post office or processing plant can
be closed. Nor do we dictate that certain numbers should be closed.”
Instead the bill sets what Collins called “logical standards” to
determine which ones should be shut.
Under the 1970 Postal
Reorganization Act, the Postal Service was supposed to be financially
self-sufficient, covering its costs through postal rates and fees. But
in its previous reform efforts, Congress has shown that it manages and
sometimes micromanages the Postal Service, even as it advocates
self-sustainability.
This week’s GAO report blamed Congress itself
for making it impossible for the Postal Service to operate as a
profitable private-sector firm would.
The GAO said, “On one hand, USPS is supposed to ‘act like a business’
and be self-financing, but on the other hand, it is restricted by law
from making decisions that businesses would commonly make, such as
closing unprofitable units.” For example, under federal law, no small
post office can be closed solely for operating at a deficit.
Paul
seems to see the Postal Service as a lost cause, calling the
Lieberman-Collins effort was “too little, too late. I always ask people
would you like to buy the Postal Service? If we could just sell it to
somebody,” he mused and then pondered another idea: “Declaring
bankruptcy – I don’t know if you could do it technically – but there’s
been some discussion of that.” Declaring bankruptcy would allow the
Postal Service to abrogate contracts with its labor unions “and start
all over” with new contracts, he said.
But the Kentucky freshman
senator acknowledged, “People are emotional” about closing post offices.
“People come to me … Republicans who say, ‘I supported you (in the 2010
election), I’m part of the Tea Party, but don’t close my post office.’”
