|
 |
 |
|
House spending bill requires Saturday mail delivery
The new House GOP spending bill directs the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail six days a week, against the wishes of the nation’s postmaster general.
A House Appropriations aide confirmed that the spending measure, which would fund the rest of fiscal 2013 and avoid a government shutdown at the end of the month, mandated that USPS continue six-day delivery.
Congress has used the appropriations process to force USPS, which has lost billions of dollars in recent years, to continue Saturday delivery for roughly three decades.
Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe had announced a plan last month to get rid of Saturday delivery of letters and other pieces of first-class mail in August, which the flailing agency said would save some $2 billion a year.
Under the plan, the Postal Service would continue to deliver packages, a growing part of their business, six days a week.
But Donahoe has also urged lawmakers to get rid of any requirements for Saturday delivery, and has consistently pointed to polling that says people in the U.S. support the decision. USPS suffered close to a $16 billion in the 2012 fiscal year, and currently loses about $25 million a day.
“You don't want the Postal Service to fail in this country. It's my responsibility, and I've taken that responsibility to make sure that we do everything in our power,” Donahoe told the Senate Homeland Security Committee last month.
“And I'm imploring Congress, please do not force us back into a six-day window. Let us make the move in August.”
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have pushed back on the decision, and questioned whether USPS has the legal authority to move forward with its plan unilaterally.
The House decision not to strip the six-day requirement from its continuing resolution now could lead to more debate over whether the agency can move forward with its plan. Senate Democrats are still discussing their potential plan for continuing government funding past March 27.
“You said you're satisfied that you have legal authority,” Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) told Donahoe in February. “I'm not. And I'm not sure the committee is. I'm not sure the Congress is.
But House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.), the ranking Republican at the Homeland Security panel, have supported Donahoe's proposal.
A spokesman for Issa told The Hill on Monday that the 30-year old appropriations rider is vague, and that Issa believes that USPS has “the authority to implement the modified Saturday delivery plan under current law and retains that authority if this provision were to be continued in its current form.”
Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), the chairman of the Homeland Security panel, said last month that he hoped to have a broad overhaul of the Postal Service completed by August, making moot the current back-and-forth over the six-day rider.
“If we are still here in this committee, in this chamber, in the Senate and the House, if we're still here on August the 5th debating this issue and postal reform legislation, we have failed,” Carper said at the February hearing.
House and Senate negotiators were unable to pass a postal reform bill at the end of the last Congress. The Senate had passed a bill in April, which would have potentially allowed USPS to move to five-day delivery within two years. But House GOP leaders declined to even bring their preferred measure, sponsored by Issa, to the floor in 2012.
Top lawmakers in both parties and both chambers have said that they are making progress on a postal bill. In addition to delivery standards, Congress is also examining whether or how much relief to give USPS from required prepayments for future retirees’ health care.
The Postal Service defaulted on two of those payments, to the tune of $11.1 billion, in fiscal 2012, which accounted for about 70 percent of the agency’s losses.
Most Viewed RSS Feed »
