{"id":7676,"date":"2014-05-31T15:34:21","date_gmt":"2014-05-31T20:34:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=7676"},"modified":"2014-05-31T15:34:21","modified_gmt":"2014-05-31T20:34:21","slug":"rolando-house-gop-plan-to-aid-transportation-fund","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2014\/05\/31\/rolando-house-gop-plan-to-aid-transportation-fund\/","title":{"rendered":"Rolando: House GOP plan to aid transportation fund"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rolando: House GOP plan to aid transportation fund\u00a0by degrading postal services would damage economy,\u00a0not achieve goals<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

May 31, 2014\u2014NALC President Fredric Rolando said the proposal by House Republican leaders to temporarily fund highway construction by degrading postal services would damage the economy while failing to achieve desired transportation goals. \"1a-fredric-rolando\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the latest attempt by GOP leaders at an end run, trying to\u00a0cut postal services to provide money for another program, whether unemployment benefits, veterans\u2019 benefits, and now highways. The prior efforts failed, not because those aren’t fine programs, but because the Postal Service plays a vital role in our economy and our communities,\u201d Rolando said.<\/p>\n

\u201cRather than offer Americans real solutions, House leadership is once more seeking the easy way out,” the president said. “America can have a strong, safe highway network without sacrificing a strong Postal Service. We shouldn\u2019t be forced to choose between the two. GOP leaders need to go back to the drawing board.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rolando called the plan a shell game that relies on accounting gimmicks and fails on multiple counts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis maneuver makes no sense,” he said. “The Postal Service doesn\u2019t rely on taxpayer money or Congress to fund its operations. It earns its revenue selling stamps, and it shouldn\u2019t be treated like a congressional piggy bank.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a political cop-out,” Rolando said. “House GOP leaders want to raid the Postal Service because there is not enough money in the Highway Trust Fund to pay for projects they want to fund. Instead of making hard choices about highway spending in an election year, some in Congress would rather resort to accounting tricks.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wouldn\u2019t even work if tried,” the president said. “There is not a penny of money here for the government. Lawmakers are claiming ‘real savings for the general fund of the Treasury’ from a future hypothetical event\u2014a postal bailout\u2014that no one is calling for or has proposed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a job-killer,” Rolando said. “Ending Saturday delivery would eliminate 80,000 postal jobs in cities and rural areas. That would affect the local, state and national tax base, and reduce consumer spending in our communities.\u00a0And it amounts to a new tax on businesses, particularly the small businesses that create two-thirds of all new jobs. They are open weekends, need to send and receive checks, and would have to hire expensive private carriers to do so without Saturday mail.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis plan would begin dismantling the Postal Service, an agency that\u2019s based in the Constitution and provides Americans with the world\u2019s most-affordable delivery service,” the president said. “A bipartisan majority of Congress has signed the resolution\u00a0by Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO) to maintain Saturday mail delivery, given\u00a0its importance to millions of\u00a0small businesses. The USPS has been operationally profitable since October 2012; degrading service would drive mail out of the system, thereby stopping the postal turnaround in its tracks and achieving the exact opposite of what proponents of this legislative maneuver claim it would do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Reaction to the plan from across the political spectrum was immediate.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE), chairman of the Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure, said in a statement Friday that the \u201cdeeply flawed proposal\u201d would cost taxpayers and hurt the ability of states to make infrastructure plans.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis proposal from House Republican Leadership is a non-starter,\u201d Carper said. \u201cThe numbers just don\u2019t add up\u2026I can’t endorse a plan that just dodges the tough decisions yet again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Heritage Action for America, lobbying arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation, blasted the trial balloon even more sharply.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea Congress would use a supposedly self-funding agency that cannot pay its bills as a piggy bank to fund another bankrupt, self-funding fund is absurd,” Dan Holler, spokesman for Heritage Action for America, said in a statement Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rolando: House GOP plan to aid transportation fund\u00a0by degrading postal services would damage economy,\u00a0not achieve goals May 31, 2014\u2014NALC President Fredric Rolando said the proposal by House Republican leaders to temporarily fund highway construction by degrading postal services would damage the economy while failing to achieve desired transportation goals. \u201cThis is the latest attempt by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7347,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nalc-news","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7676","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=7676"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7677,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7676\/revisions\/7677"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}