{"id":7642,"date":"2014-05-23T07:21:38","date_gmt":"2014-05-23T12:21:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=7642"},"modified":"2014-05-23T07:21:38","modified_gmt":"2014-05-23T12:21:38","slug":"issa-delivery-bill-approved-on-party-line-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2014\/05\/23\/issa-delivery-bill-approved-on-party-line-vote\/","title":{"rendered":"Issa Delivery Bill Approved on Party-Line Vote"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>NAPUS &#8211; May 21, 2014<\/p>\n<p>On Wednesday afternoon, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee approved H.R. 4670, the \u201cSecure Delivery for America Act,\u201d by a 18-13 party-line vote. The legislation, which\u00a0 Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA)\u00a0 introduced on Monday, would require the Postal Service to convert 14 million door deliveries to either centralized, curbside or sidewalk, over the next decade. The bill calls for the conversion of 1.4 million delivery points per year, through 2024. Postal customers who desire to maintain door delivery, in converted locations, would be charged a fee.<\/p>\n<p>As introduced, H.R. 4670 would have established a USPS \u201cvoucher program\u201d to help homeowners defray the cost of establishing curbside or sidewalk mail receptacles. Ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings (D-MD) offered an amendment that would require the USPS to cover the conversion cost, rather than impose the cost on homeowners. Also, the Cummings amendment would\u00a0 have eliminated the numerical conversion targets. Chairman Issa accepted the elimination of the voucher, but opposed the elimination of the annual targets. <a href=\"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/1a-NAPUS-small.gif\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-6549\" src=\"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/1a-NAPUS-small.gif\" alt=\"1a-NAPUS-small\" width=\"322\" height=\"181\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The committee adopted an amendment proposed by Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) to provide for a broad waiver for postal customers who are disabled, or otherwise unable to access alternative delivery modes.<\/p>\n<p>Rep. Steve Lynch (D-MA) offered an amendment to require the refund to the USPS of its surplus pension contributions, but the chairman ruled the amendment \u201cout of order\u201d for not being \u201cgermane\u201d to the bill. Lynch also offered an amendment to eliminate the fee charged to maintain door deliveries in converted areas. This amendment was defeated on a voice vote.<\/p>\n<p>Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) offered two amendments. One would have mandated the continuation of six-day delivery and the other would have eliminated the retiree health pre-funding requirement; Chairman Issa ruled\u00a0 both \u201cout of order.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>During the mark-up of the bill, Issa remarked that it was his intent to urge the House to adopt a narrow postal reform bill, that would be a patchwork of small bills that his committee has already approved, and would include provisions from the President Obama\u2019s postal relief plan. At the end of the day, a postal bill will only be as good as the sum of its parts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NAPUS &#8211; May 21, 2014 On Wednesday afternoon, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee approved H.R. 4670, the \u201cSecure Delivery for America Act,\u201d by a 18-13 party-line vote. The legislation, which\u00a0 Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA)\u00a0 introduced on Monday, would require the Postal Service to convert 14 million door deliveries to either centralized, curbside or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-usps-new-bytes","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7642"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7643,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7642\/revisions\/7643"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}