Late Wednesday afternoon, the Senate passed S 1789, the 21st Century Postal Act of 2012, by an overwhelming margin of 62-37. The bill makes it more difficult to close small rural post offices and provides a one year moratorium on closings of small post offices in rural areas. The bill provides a return of $11 billion (prefunding overpayment) to the Postal Service, which can be used to pay down the postal debt and fund buyouts for employees. Under this bill, the Postal Service would save billions of dollars annually as health benefits prefunding requirements would be reduced. The savings would come as a result of an approved re-structuring of the Postal Service’s scheduled payments for retiree health benefits, which would still provide the necessary funding for future retiree health benefits.

Now, similar legislation must move through the House before it can become law. For more information on S 1789, and where postal legislation goes from here, please go to the NAPUS Legislative News link.

Charlie Moser
April 26, 2012

Also from NAPUS
April 25, 2012

Overwhelming Bipartisan Majority Passes S. 1789

Late this afternoon, the U.S. Senate aptly demonstrated how bipartisanship can elevate debate and generate a legislative product that helps relieve some of the challenges confronting the Postal Service, while still maintaining universal access. In sum, the measure refunds retirement system overpayments to the USPS, permits the agency to use a portion of the surplus payments to incentivize retirement, reamortizes retiree health care prefunding payments, and provides enhanced protections for communities confronting post office closures. It now falls to the House of Representatives to meet the challenge to work in a bipartisan way to move a product, other than the highly-partisan H.R. 2309.

On final passage, the Lieberman-Collins-Carper-Brown postal relief bill, as amended, was approved by a 62-37 majority. 12 GOP members voted along with 50 Democrats in favor of S. 1789. On the other hand, 3 Democrats joined with 34 Republicans to oppose the bill. At the conclusion of the debate, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell went out of his way to complement the bipartisanship; he then voted against the bill.

In addition to the facility amendments adopted yesterday, the Senate considered additional amendments that strive to lessen the impact of postal facility closings, some were approved and some were defeated. The Senate defeated SA 2079, an amendment by Senator Manchin, to extend the facility closing moratorium by two years by a 43-53 vote. In addition, the Senate defeated SA 2042, by Sen. Casey, which would have maintained current delivery standards for four years. However, the Senate adopted, by voice vote, SA 2036, a “Sense of the Senate Resolution” by Senator Pryor to extend the facility closing moratorium through enactment of S. 1789. Also, the Senate adopted SA 2072, by Sen. Landrieu, which would require the USPS to evaluate the potential impact of a facility closure on small businesses.

A series of roll-call votes were taken on controversial anti-labor and anti-postal amendments, all of which failed. Sen. Paul offered SA 2025, which would have ended the USPS’ exclusive use of residential mailboxes, and SA 2028, to establish experimental alternative delivery systems. Both Paul amendments failed on a 35-64 vote. Paul also introduced amendment SA 2039, to eliminate postal employee collective-bargaining. It was soundly defeated by a vote of 23-76. The Senate also defeated an SA 2046, Sen. Demint, which would have curtailed union political activities by a party-line 46-53 vote. (This was the only party-line vote during consideration of S. 1789. )

Another noteworthy amendment, SA 2050, was offered by Sen. Schumer. It passed by voice vote and would delete, from S. 1789, the provision to direct the USPS to move away from door deliveries.

Finally, a series of amendments were adopted by voice vote to limit the compensation of high-level postal executives: SA 2066 by Senator Carper and SA 2032 by Sen. Tester.

To see how your senator was recorded on all roll-call votes, including final passage, click on Senate Votes.