Usps Fairness Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. LYNCH. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her kindness and the courtesy afforded to me.
I do want to say that, like some other Members in this Chamber, I think at one count, I had 17 of my relatives, including my mom, several of her sisters, two of my sisters, my brother-in-law, all my cousins, who worked for the United States Postal Service, sort of the family business.
And I do thank the gentleman from North Carolina. We spent, you know, days, if not weeks, if not months, arguing over the contours of this legislation.
I want to thank Mr. DeFazio. And I rise in strong support of his bill.
I also thank my colleague from Virginia (Mr. Connolly) for his work on this as well. And our dear colleague, Elijah Cummings, who worked on this, put his heart and soul into finding a solution.
Look, I do agree with the gentleman from North Carolina's comments, that this does not solve everything. It does not. But it is an important element of a bill that we, Republicans and Democrats, passed out of committee unanimously, without any dissent in a previous session. So it is a very important element of what we are trying to do.
There is no dispute with the gentleman from Oregon's earlier remarks that we don't ask any other group within government to fund their retiree health benefits this way. This was an idea that, I think, came out of a time when, before email and before the use of social media, the volume of mail within the Postal Service being delivered every single day, could sustain the current configuration of retiree health benefits.
Those days are long gone, and we have to figure out a way that will keep the Postal Service viable going forward.
This does not solve everything but, boy, I will tell you, this solves a lot. It buys us time to craft those other pieces that need to come together as well.
So I would argue that we should not allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good. This is a solid change here.
This is something that I think people need to understand that what we are requiring of the Postal Service right now is that, when a new employee comes into the Postal Service, we have to set aside the money, on day one, for their eventual retirement; while every other collective bargaining agreement and pension system periodically reassesses what the demands are as that person gets closer to retirement. That is the critical time to know whether or not there are sufficient resources and a guarantee that certain resources are there for that person to enjoy the retirement and the benefits and the health benefits that they have earned.
So I just ask my colleagues to vote in support of this bill. I support Mr. DeFazio's bill wholeheartedly, and I thank the Speaker for his courtesy.
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Mr. LYNCH. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 2382, the U.S.P.S. Fairness Act, introduced by my colleague, Representative Peter DeFazio of Oregon.
I'd like to commend Mr. DeFazio and the other bipartisan sponsors of this bill--Mr. Reed of New York, Ms. Torres-Small of New Mexico, and Mr. Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania--for their leadership in addressing the serious fiscal challenges facing the United States Postal Service. I'd also like to recognize the relentless and united effort on the part of our postal employee unions, management associations, and other stakeholders to advance this commonsense legislation.
With the support of over 300 bipartisan cosponsors, the U.S.P.S. Fairness Act would repeal a misguided provision in current law requiring the postal service to fully fund its health care costs for future postal retirees decades before it is necessary--that's an annual average cost of over $5.5 billion dollars. This is a requirement that federal law does not impose on any other government agency--especially one that receives zero tax dollars and instead relies on the revenue generated by its own stamps, products, and services to fund its operations. It is no surprise that the postal service has not been able to make these exorbitant annual payments since 2011.
The elimination of the so-called ``pre-funding mandate'' is a sensible first step towards improving the financial viability of the postal service. This bipartisan bill should also guide our approach to developing comprehensive postal reform legislation going forward. In stark contrast to the more partisan and sweeping reform proposals that have been presented to our committee in recent years, H.R. 2382 will immediately place the postal service on more sound financial footing while preserving its core public service mission to ``provide postal services to bind the nation together through the correspondence of the people.''
And contrary to the degradation of postal delivery services, or the wholesale privatization of the postal service itself, H.R. 2382 is the end product of bipartisan cooperation and the subject of broad consensus among our diverse postal stakeholders. As we develop additional postal reform legislation, it is imperative that we continue to identify fundamental and practical areas of agreement.
I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this legislation.
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