* Many amendments would protect postal facilities
* Rural mail delivery an issue for senators
* Bill needs 60 votes to move to U.S. House
April 23 (Reuters) – Lawmakers will fight to save post
offices and other U.S. Postal Service facilities from closure as
the Senate gears up to vote on amendments to a bill to overhaul
the struggling mail agency.
The Postal Service has been losing billions of dollars each
year as Americans increasingly communicate online. Barring
drastic changes, officials have said, the mail agency could face
annual losses of $18 billion by 2015.
The Senate plans to begin voting on Tuesday on amendments to
a bipartisan bill that would allow the agency to tap into a
retirement-fund surplus and end Saturday delivery after two
years.
But rural-state lawmakers argue that the bill does not do
enough to scale back the Postal Service’s plans to close
thousands of money-losing post offices and hundreds of mail
processing facilities starting in mid-May.
The desire to protect beloved postal facilities and jobs in
their states has led some lawmakers to threaten voting against
the bill, indicating a potentially tricky path forward for
postal legislation.
“At this point in time, I would have a difficult time
supporting the bill unless we do some things to help protect
rural areas in this country,” Democratic Senator Jon Tester told
reporters last week.
The Postal Service lost more than $3 billion in its most
recent quarter, much of it due to a massive payment for future
retiree health benefits. The agency says its costs are too high,
and mail volumes too low, to justify the current number of post
offices and processing centers.
The Senate bill spreads the retiree payments out over a
longer time frame and requires the agency to deliver mail on
Saturdays for two more years. A manager’s amendment approved by
its authors creates tougher guidelines for closing post offices
and temporarily blocks the Postal Service from ending overnight
mail delivery.
But it faces a tough road. The Senate currently is
considering nearly 40 amendments, although a Senate aide said
many would not receive votes. The final bill must clear a tough
60-vote hurdle to move to the U.S. House of Representatives. And
even if it gets there, the bill differs considerably from the
leading House plan.
Senators have offered amendments on a wide range of issues,
from workers compensation changes to reducing the number of post
offices in the Capitol.
One amendment requires the Postal Service to move to
five-day mail delivery, while another would force it to keep
Saturday mail for the foreseeable future.
The bill’s authors, Democrat Thomas Carper, Republicans
Scott Brown and Susan Collins, and Independent Joe Lieberman,
have said their bill already addresses many of the issues in the
amendments and reiterated that the Postal Service will continue
losing money without major change.
“If we fail to act … the Postal Service will not survive
as we know it,” Collins said on the Senate floor on Monday.
Protecting postal facilities
Many of the amendments under consideration would offer more
protections for postal facilities.
Tester’s amendment would require the Postal Service to
consider additional factors before closing a post office,
including how an affected community would prefer to receive
postal services.
Senator Olympia Snowe, a Republican, would create
restrictions for processing centers, requiring the agency to
develop a plan to reduce capacity without closing the site.
Senator Claire McCaskill would place a two-year moratorium
on rural post office closings, and fellow Democrat Michael
Bennet would establish a position for an advocate who would
represent rural communities when the Postal Service sought to
close post offices and processing centers.
Not every lawmaker supports this approach. Republican
Senator John McCain backs an amendment that would create an
oversight group to close post offices, similar to a provision in
the leading House of Representatives bill.
McCain also has criticized the Senate bill’s two-year delay
before ending Saturday mail delivery. “That’s one of the
favorite tactics around here, is more studies,” he said in a
speech on the Senate floor last week.
