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House unlikely to vote on postal reform bill before August recess
The House is not expected to vote on a Republican-sponsored postal reform bill before leaving for their August recess, lawmakers said Wednesday, further delaying Congress from reaching a broad agreement on overhauling the cash-strapped Postal Service.
House GOP leaders had said they would try to bring up the postal bill, from House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), before the recess.
But with House Republicans also looking to tackle a number of other issues before members head back to their districts — including the George Bush-era tax rates and regulations — members on both sides of the aisle said there was almost no chance postal reform would make it on to the floor schedule this month.
“I’d like to see us get it done,” said Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.), the chairman of the House Oversight subcommittee that oversees USPS and a key co-sponsor of the Issa bill. “But I think the chances of getting it done in the next three weeks are slim.”
A GOP leadership aide said Wednesday that top Republicans were working with Issa on his bill, and were aware of financial deadlines that the Postal Service faces in the months to come.
The delay would prioritize election-year messaging votes over actions to rescue the Postal Service, which is currently losing $25 million a day and is on track to bleed billions of dollars again this fiscal year. The agency has seen first-class mail volumes decline since 2006, and says it needs to cut $22.5 billion from its annual costs by 2016.
Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe and Senate leaders have also urged the full House to pass a postal reform bill quickly, so that the two chambers could get to work reconciling what are expected to be drastically different bills. The Senate passed its version of postal reform in April.
But even after a version of the Issa bill passed House Oversight last October, the bill has yet to proceed to the floor, with Democratic lawmakers among those speculating that Republicans didn’t have the votes to pass their measure.
Delaying House consideration of the postal bill until at least September could also raise concerns that Congress would be unable to come together on a compromise postal bill before the end of the year.
The looming fiscal cliff is expected to take up most of the oxygen on Capitol Hill in the later months of the year, and the Senate bill and current House proposal take different approaches on knotty issues like Saturday delivery and a required prepayment that USPS has to make for retiree health care.
Ross told The Hill on Wednesday that, with each passing day, he was growing more concerned about Congress enacting postal reform before the end of the year. But the Florida Republican also said he thought the GOP had the votes needed to pass the bill, and trusted leadership’s judgment on the issue.
“I’m ready,” Ross said. “I’m in the bullpen warming up, ready to go in.”
Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) said Wednesday that the House pushing back consideration of postal reform would further threaten a nearly $1 trillion industry, and criticized House leaders for instead concentrating on proposals he called “highly political in nature.”
“The longer the House delays action, the more consumers and businesses become uncertain about the future of the Postal Service, undermining confidence in the Postal Service’s future and harming its ability to build new business,” Carper said in a statement.
The House bill would, among other things, implement a BRAC-style panel that would recommend a plan for cutting costs, and open the door for a control board to take over for postal management, if USPS fails to meet its obligations for 30 days.
Unions and Democratic lawmakers have sharply criticized the proposal from Issa and Ross, and some Republicans from rural areas also expressed some concern about the measure in recent months.
But Issa and Ross have worked to assuage those concerns, and have agreed to include a proposal that would ensure that no more than 5 percent of post office closures in a given year would come from rural areas.
The Senate bill, meanwhile, would reduce the strain of the roughly $5.5 billion in annual retiree prepayments and use a federal pension overpayment to help ease postal workers into retirement.
It would also keep postal officials from scrapping Saturday delivery for at least two years, while the House bill would allow USPS to move more quickly on that front.
Issa and postal officials like Donahoe have criticized the Senate bill for not allowing the service to move fast enough to cut costs. But Donahoe has said he believes the best parts of the House and Senate bill could serve as a long-term solution to the agency’s financial troubles.
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