Senate pushes House GOP to move on Postal Service reform bill

By Bernie Becker - 05/29/12 05:00 AM ET

Senators and stakeholders are pushing House Republicans to move more swiftly on their postal reform bill, saying quick action is needed to prop up the cash-strapped Postal Service.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), in a memo to lawmakers on Friday, said the chamber would look to bring a GOP postal proposal to the floor between the July 4 holiday and the August recess.

But interested observers want the House to pick up the pace — noting that not only is the Postal Service bleeding money by the day, but that election-year politics and the so-called “fiscal cliff” are also going to consume much of the oxygen on Capitol Hill later in the year.

The Senate has already passed its postal reform bill, a measure that differs greatly from the current House GOP proposal. And if the House passes legislation shortly before lawmakers skip town for August, that would likely push a conference committee on postal reform into September.

Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), one of the sponsors of the Senate postal bill, also noted that the Friday GOP memo did not explicitly promise a vote before August.

“It is irresponsible to further postpone action — creating more uncertainty, undermining confidence in the Postal Service’s future and harming its ability to build new business,” Carper said in a statement.

Art Sackler, coordinator of the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service, said he hoped the House would speed up the process by voting before Independence Day, given that the end of the year seems likely to be consumed with issues like the expiration of the Bush-era tax rates and automatic spending cuts.

“It’s a very complicated outlook for postal legislation, so the sooner we can get something done, the better,” said Sackler, whose group represents FedEx, Time Warner and other members of the private mailing industry. “The last thing we want to see is this fall by the wayside because of even more pressing national priorities.”

As it stands, the Postal Service has lost billions of dollars since mail volume started to decline from a 2006 peak, as potential customers find increasingly digital ways to communicate and the economy slogs through a slow recovery.

Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe has also urged lawmakers to move more quickly on postal reform, saying this month that he hoped President Obama could sign legislation into law this summer. In the meantime, the agency has gone ahead with its plans to consolidate mail processing centers, and tried to implement other cost-cutting measures as it awaits legislation.

But GOP aides cautioned Friday not to read too much into the wording of Cantor’s memo, which said Republicans would “be working” to bring the postal bill from Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and Dennis Ross (R-Fla.) to the floor this summer.

One GOP aide also noted that postal officials had said that the Senate postal bill would spur the need for more legislation in a few years, and suggested the House was moving more methodically to ensure that the Postal Service’s operations could be reformed once and for all.

“The House must advance postal reform legislation which restores USPS to long-term solvency, preserves universal mail service and protects taxpayers,” the staffer said. “USPS cannot save itself without a comprehensive legislative solution.”

At the same time, the bill from Issa and Ross passed House Oversight more than seven months ago, prompting Democrats and others to speculate that Republicans don’t yet have the votes to pass their plan.

Issa and Ross have announced in recent weeks that they will work with Republicans from rural states to maximize rural access to postal services, even as they seek cost-cutting measures.

If the House waits until July or beyond to vote on its postal bill, that could also complicate efforts to deal with the roughly $5.5 billion that USPS owes before Aug. 1 to help pay for future retirees’ healthcare.

The agency has said it will be unable to make either that payment, which has already been delayed several times, or a separate tab for retiree healthcare costs that is due before the end of the fiscal year.

Compared to the House bill, the Senate legislation gives USPS greater relief from that prepayment. But postal officials have also said they prefer the speed at which the House allows USPS to move to five-day delivery and to cut other costs.

With that in mind, Donahoe has said that a good compromise could arise from a postal conference — once the House actually passes a bill.

“We really want to make this the last time,” he said in an April C-SPAN appearance.