[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 134 (Thursday, September 18, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5766-S5769]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




  BANK ON STUDENTS EMERGENCY LOAN REFINANCING ACT--MOTION TO PROCEED--
                               Continued

  Mr. CHAMBLISS. I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning 
business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                   Tribute to Martha Scott Poindexter

  Mr. CHAMBLISS. It is with great pride and a touch of sadness that I 
stand here today to pay a special tribute to Martha Scott Poindexter, 
my dear friend and trusted confidant. Martha Scott is leaving the staff 
of the Senate after a long and distinguished career in public service.
  Martha Scott has dedicated most of her professional life to the 
Congress, serving over 20 years in both the House of Representatives as 
well as the Senate. She was with me in my first agricultural hearing in 
the House, and as I prepare to retire from the Senate this year, she 
was with me today in one of my last hearings as the vice chairman of 
the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
  I owe much of my success as a legislator to Martha Scott. She has 
served as my legislative assistant in the House, legislative director 
when I first entered the Senate, and later as my staff director for 
both the agriculture and intelligence committees.
  It is no exaggeration to say that Martha Scott is one of the 
brightest, most talented, and well-connected individuals on Capitol 
Hill. She is a natural leader and manager who exemplifies a tremendous 
character and dedication that traditionally defines the term a public 
servant.
  Martha Scott is an enthusiastic team player with a special talent for 
finding solutions to complex problems and rallying support behind her. 
Those are enormously helpful traits on the Hill, especially in recent 
years when it seems as though finding solutions has taken a back seat 
to partisanship.
  But those are not the characteristics that define Martha Scott. 
Rather, those who work with her and who have known her professionally 
and personally are most often struck by her tremendous heart and 
kindness. Her infectious laugh always brings a smile to the faces of 
friends nearby. This place just won't be the same without it.
  Above all, she is a good person, loyal to the core, and committed to 
always doing what is right. All she asks in return is that people say 
her first name correctly, Martha Scott. It is not Martha. We 
Southerners can be very particular that way, and we like double names.
  What began in the junior position in the office of Senator Cochran 
nearly 24 years ago blossomed into a distinguished public service 
career that is nearly unmatched by our peers. Martha Scott has seen and 
been involved in so many historic events and helped author legislation 
that has touched and impacted the lives of all our citizens, but don't 
expect Martha Scott to tell anybody that. That is just not her style.
  Whether it is her work on the Committee on Appropriations, the 
Committee on Agriculture, the Select Committee on Intelligence, or as a 
member of my personal legislative staff, Martha Scott has selflessly 
committed herself to the people we represent, whether it is the cotton 
farmer from the Mississippi Delta, the soldier in Afghanistan, or the 
thousands of intelligence professionals who serve our country every 
day.
  Martha Scott has always kept our Nation's best interests at heart.
  Finding a natural love of politics and policy drove Martha Scott to 
be a key player in the legislative process that touched every farm bill 
for the last 25 years, as well as the recent controversial debates on 
cyber security and intelligence collection.
  My colleagues and I trust Martha Scott's judgment impeccably. Her 
exceptional performance has earned our respect and admiration, and it 
has inspired a generation of staff members who have had the privilege 
to work with her and learn from her. Her legacy will remain a part of 
the Senate for many years to come.
  Martha Scott has a profound commitment to family and her roots in the 
delta define her. Growing up on the family farm provided a strong 
foundation and work ethic that one only gets in rural Mississippi.
  Guided by her loving parents and the constant support of her sisters, 
Martha Scott has not only won the admiration of those for whom she has 
worked, but for those who have worked for her.
  To her husband, Robert, we thank you for allowing us to take up so 
much of her time, especially in this very special year. My colleagues 
and I owe a deep debt of gratitude to each and every member of Martha 
Scott's family.
  Martha Scott has been a part of my staff for 20 years, which means 
she has been a part of my family for 20 years. She has watched my 
children mature and my grandchildren grow up, and they have all come to 
know and love her. She has been an inspiration to so many people, but 
most importantly she has been an inspiration to me. While everybody is 
going to miss her, I am the one who is going to miss her the most.
  So Martha Scott, to you we say: Congratulations on a life after the 
Senate. Just know how much, No. 1, we are going to miss you, but 
secondly and most importantly, your country is going to miss you. We 
appreciate your tremendous commitment and service to our country.
  God bless you and God bless your family.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.


                    The United States Postal Service

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, as we finished the last series of votes we 
were talking about the range of difficult issues we face in this 
Congress and also in our country--a series of issues including what to 
do about ISIS and how to confront this latest threat, whether or not to 
provide aid to the moderate rebels in Syria and what form should that 
aid take, continued concerns that flow from Ukraine, and the areas 
there along the border with Russia, cyber attacks, data breaches, Ebola 
outbreaks, folks trying to get into our country from all different 
directions, especially from Central America. These are hard issues to 
deal with. Try though we may, it is hard to fix them.
  As my colleague who serves with us on homeland security knows, it is 
a busy neighborhood where we have jurisdiction. It is not that the 
problems are intractable. They are just hard issues, and some of them 
may take years to fully resolve.
  But I might say as well, the economic recovery has continued now for 
5 years and it has been stop and go. Every now and then we have some 
great encouraging news, and sometimes it is less so. But today we have 
encouraging news.
  I wish to talk a little bit about this as we talk about the economy 
and lead into a discussion of where the postal system of our country 
actually has played a role in strengthening our economic recovery.
  Every Thursday, as my colleague knows, the Department of Labor puts 
out information. Among the things they promulgate on Thursdays is how 
many people filed for unemployment insurance in the last week. They do 
this every Thursday, except maybe on Thanksgiving or maybe on a 
Christmas.
  On the Thursday of the week that Barack Obama and Joe Biden were 
sworn in as President and Vice President, they put out a number that 
said 628,000 people filed for unemployment insurance. Any time that 
number is above 400,000 people, we are losing jobs in this country, and 
any time it is under 400,000 people, we are adding jobs in this 
country. It was 628,000 that week 5\1/2\ years ago.
  Slowly but surely, that number has dropped and has continued to drop. 
It bounces up and down a little bit. Since it may go up and down from 
week to week, we do a 4-week running average and that kind of balances 
out the blips.
  Well, the number has dropped from 628,000 people 5\1/2\ ago to 
400,000 people and to 300,000 people. We got the new report today from 
the Department of

[[Page S5767]]

Labor, and 280,000 people filed last week for unemployment insurance.
  Why should we feel so good about that? Because that number is the 
lowest we have been below 400,000 since the year the recession actually 
began--certainly in the last 5\1/2\ years. That would suggest as kind 
of a forerunner what will come in for the job numbers for the month of 
September, which we will get at the beginning of October. I am 
encouraged by that.

  There are a number of things we can do and ought to do to continue to 
strengthen the economic recovery. I won't go into all those, but one I 
want to mention deals with the U.S. Postal Service. Not everybody says 
the Postal Service has much to do with the economy, but it does. There 
are about 7 million or 8 million jobs in the United States that depend 
to one extent or the other on having an efficient, vibrant Postal 
Service.
  For a number of years, the Postal Service has been struggling in some 
cases to survive. The Postal Service has cut, cut, cut in order to try 
to right-size their enterprise. In the last 10 or so years they have 
reduced their headcount from almost 900,000 to about 500,000--so almost 
in half. They have reduced the number of processing centers across the 
country from about 600 or 700 mail processing centers to actually less 
than half that, a little over 300. We have close to 35,000 to 40,000 
post offices across the country, and over 10,000 of those today--they 
haven't really closed post offices, but what they did is a bunch of 
offices that didn't do much business, those post offices are still open 
in many cases, but they are open 2 hours, 4 hours, 6 hours a day rather 
than 8 hours a day with a fully paid postmaster. So they have found a 
way to not close a lot of post offices but to reduce their costs there, 
and they are still struggling. Every 3 months they put out their 
financial reports, and the financial reports indicate they are either 
losing money or may be close to breaking even.
  As the Presiding Officer knows, this is an issue I think about a 
whole lot. He does, too. The Senator from Alaska cares a lot about the 
needs of the Postal Service. The need for a strong and vibrant Postal 
Service in Alaska is probably greater than in any State in the country. 
He has done a great job, along with his colleague from Alaska, to try 
to make sure that we are mindful in the Senate of the importance of the 
Postal Service to Alaska.
  I have a glass of water here which one of our pages was good enough 
to bring to me. Look at this glass of water. It is not really clear. Is 
this glass half full or half empty? Most people thinking about the 
Postal Service in the last several years would say this glass of water 
is half empty. As time goes by, I am starting to think maybe that is 
the wrong approach, that is the wrong opinion. I think this glass of 
water might actually be half full. The more I learn about the Postal 
Service's operations and the opportunities they face, I am even more 
convinced the opportunity here is a glass-half-full situation.
  We have had over the years probably a dozen or more hearings in the 
Senate on the Postal Service. The real challenge is: How do we take a 
200-plus-year-old legacy organization, legacy distribution network that 
takes the Postal Service to every mailbox in the country 5 or 6 days a 
week? How do we take that legacy distribution network and enable the 
Postal Service, empower the Postal Service to make money and be 
profitable in the 21st century?
  As we know, we don't communicate like we used to in this country. We 
have the Internet, we have Skype, we have Twitter, we have cell phones. 
There are a lot of different ways to communicate that we didn't have 
even 12 or 15 years ago. Folks used to send birthday cards, Christmas 
cards, that sort of thing. Now they send email cards, if they send 
anything at all. People used to write letters and notes. My parents 
during World War II wrote to each other almost every day. Folks in 
Afghanistan have email, they have Skype, and they have cell phones. 
They still send some mail, but it is not like it used to be. A lot of 
businesses that used the mail to do billings for people to send in 
remittances don't do that anymore.
  First-class mail in this country is where the Postal Service has made 
their money for many years. That is where the most profitable source of 
income is--first-class mail. Since the great recession started in 2007, 
we have seen first-class mail drop by almost half, and that has caused 
huge problems for the Postal Service going forward.
  While the Internet and the digital age has taken away a lot of the 
Postal Service's business, as it has turned out, it has also given them 
some pretty good opportunities. As we know, not everybody goes to a 
department store these days to buy things, to a hardware store or to a 
bookstore. Not every day, but a lot of times we will buy things over 
the Internet. Those items, whether gifts or things we might want for 
ourselves, they have somehow to get from the manufacturer's or 
retailer's distribution center to the customer. Somebody has to deliver 
it. As it turns out, that somebody could be FedEx, it could be UPS or 
in many cases it could be the Postal Service.
  So I wish to take a few minutes and speak this evening about how I 
really do think the Postal Service could be a glass-half-full 
situation. Part of our responsibility here in the Senate is to make 
sure they are able to seize this opportunity and not let it pass by.
  The Postal Service has been calling for us to do a number of things 
to help them--not to give them money but to do a number of things to 
help them. I will mention a few of them.
  The Postal Service has overpaid by $2.5 billion what they owe into 
the Federal Employee Retirement System. Given the formula used, which 
is not taking into account that postal employees are older and die 
sooner than other Federal employees, the Postal Service is going to 
continue to overpay monies. So they are owed a $2.5 billion refund, and 
if we don't do something, they are going to continue to overpay. We 
should first get them the $2.5 billion refund. The second thing we 
should do is change the formula so it reflects the demographics of the 
Postal Service versus the rest of the Federal workforce.

  Among the other things we ought to do is to integrate, if you will, 
Medicare--better integrate Medicare with the cost of health care for 
postal employees.
  My wife turned 65 early this summer. When she did, the company where 
she worked for 27 years, DuPont, mailed her something and said: We 
still love you. You are retired, you are 65, and we want you to sign up 
for Medicare Part A, Medicare Part B, and Medicare Part D. We will in 
turn provide wrap-around or fill-the-gap health care coverage for you. 
They do that for all the retirees when they reach 65. And it is not 
just DuPont. It is thousands of companies all over the country. When 
their retirees reach the age of 65, for the most part they say to the 
retirees: You are eligible for Medicare Part A, Part B, Part D. We want 
you to sign up, and we will provide wrap-around coverage for you.
  FedEx, I believe, does that. UPS, I believe, does that. The Postal 
Service--which competes in the same business as both FedEx, UPS, and 
some of these other companies--doesn't do that. As it turns out, the 
Postal Service pays more money into Medicare than any employer in the 
country. They do not get the full value for the dollars they have 
invested.
  One of the things the Postal Service has asked us to do as simply a 
matter of equity is to allow them to do what so many other companies 
do, including some of the companies they compete directly with--FedEx 
and UPS. We ought to do that. That is one of the things they are asking 
us to do.
  Another thing, under the current law, from time to time, if there is 
something that happens in the economy or there is a disaster and the 
Postal Service needs to raise rates on kind of an emergency basis, 
called an exigent basis, they can apply to the Postal Regulatory 
Commission and ask to do that. The Postal Regulatory Commission can say 
yes or they can say no.
  Last year, the Postal Service went to the Postal Regulatory 
Commission and said: We suffered terribly because of the loss of first-
class mail that flowed from the worst recession since the Great 
Depression. We would like to have something above and beyond a CPI 
increase, a cost of living increase, for our rates. What did the Postal 
Regulatory Commission do? They agreed to raise the rates and let the 
post office raise the rates.

[[Page S5768]]

  So what did the Postal Regulatory Commission do? They agreed to let 
the Postal Service raise the rates, which works out to a 4.3-percent 
increase. It is not permanent, but it is for a period of maybe a year. 
The Postal Service is asking us to make that 4.3-percent increase their 
new permanent revenue baseline.
  What does that mean for mailers if we make it permanent? For folks 
who are nonprofit--we always get mail from nonprofit organizations. 
That is part of the way they provide services to all kinds of folks. 
But the cost of a nonprofit letter under this action--the 4.3-percent 
increase--has gone up from 10 cents a letter to 11 cents. It has gone 
up by one penny. I believe the cost of mailing a magazine has also gone 
up by one or two pennies, from approximately 25 to 27 cents. The cost 
of mailing a catalog has gone up by one or two cents, from 
approximately 45 cents to 47 cents, and that is with the 4.3-percent 
increase.
  The Postal Service has said to the Congress: Allow that temporary 
4.3-percent increase to remain and to become part of our revenue 
baseline.
  I think we should do that. I know a number of my colleagues do as 
well.
  That is one of the things they are asking us to do. Among the other 
things they are asking us to do is they want to actually deliver items 
they haven't been able to deliver before, including wine, beer, and 
spirits. FedEx and UPS can do that, and postal services in many other 
countries can do that. Our Postal Service cannot do that. It is not to 
balance their budget for them, but it would make a big difference. I 
believe it could be worth a couple million dollars a year in 
profitability. That is something they would like to be able to do.
  FedEx is not interested in being Google or Apple or any company like 
that--part of the digital economy--but there are a couple things they 
can do and would like to do that would work into the digital economy. 
They are not big deals, but they make sense with respect to the Postal 
Service and their capabilities and would actually enable them over time 
to make some revenues as well.
  The Postal Service delivers ballots, initially in Oregon, later in 
Washington State, and this year in Colorado. People can file their 
vote--get absentee ballots and vote by mail in Oregon. They do it in 
Washington State. This year they are starting to do it in Colorado.
  What we have learned from experience is that folks who vote by mail 
vote more often, more frequently, and what we hear from States that do 
this is that it is actually a cost-effective way to run elections. The 
Postal Service would like to do more of that, and we should encourage 
that as well.
  Another area where the Postal Service might have some opportunities 
is they would like to collocate more operations with State and local 
governments in small communities where they have space at the post 
office and get State and local folks to locate some activities there.
  One great idea they had in some of the bigger, more densely populated 
places around the country is that the Postal Service has opened up 
large facilities--not like a regular post office--where people can go 
get passports. There is a facility on the outskirts of L.A. where over 
the course of the day hundreds--maybe even 1,000 people or more--can 
come and get their passports. It is a service that is provided. The 
Postal Service makes some revenue from doing that.
  If we ever pass comprehensive immigration reform and we have 10 
million or so people in this country who are here undocumented--and 
immigration reform doesn't give them the right to citizenship, it 
doesn't make them a citizen, but I think if the Senate passed an 
immigration reform bill, it would offer an opportunity for people to 
have some kind of legal status. How are they going to get that? Where 
are they going to get that?
  If we passed immigration reform, there would be an opportunity for 
the Postal Service, which is in every community in our Nation and which 
already does a passport business for a lot of people, to help meet that 
need, and my hope is they will have that opportunity.
  Those are some things they are asking us to do. In short, what they 
are asking us to do is to give them the ability to generate revenues 
and to be able to meet their capital needs.
  The Postal Service needs to be capitalized. They need new vehicles. 
They have 190,000 vehicles.
  We have this chart. This is 2014, and down here is about 10 years 
down the road. What we are looking for is to provide money over this 
10-year period of time. The Postal Service is saying they need about 
$30 billion to recapitalize the Postal Service to make them 
competitive. One of the ways to make them competitive is with respect 
to vehicles. They have 190,000 vehicles. The average age is 22 years.
  I have a 13-year-old Chrysler Town and Country minivan. Yesterday I 
drove it down here from Wilmington, DE. I usually take the train. The 
train was down 2 days ago. I drove home last night, and it just went 
over 377,000 miles. Most Postal Service vehicles are not 13 years old 
like my minivan; they are almost twice as old and easily have twice as 
much mileage as my minivan. My wife thinks I ought to trade in my 
minivan, and some day I will.

  We should give the Postal Service the wherewithal to trade up--not 
just to get new, more energy-efficient vehicles that may have twice the 
fuel economy and reduce emissions but also vehicles that are sized for 
the products the Postal Service is delivering. In this digital economy, 
it is an opportunity for the Postal Service to deliver a lot more 
packages and parcels of all kinds. They are delivering groceries in a 
number of places around the country, and they need vehicles that are 
sized differently and that are more ergonomically appropriate for the 
folks who are driving the vehicles.
  There is new technology. Anybody buying a new car lately knows the 
technologies that are in vehicles. It is amazing what we can do. I 
wouldn't know that, given the age of my vehicle, but my friends tell me 
about the amazing things they can do with theirs. When you have a 
vehicle that is 22 years old, there are not many gee-whiz technology 
items on those vehicles, but there could be. As an example, let's say 
my desk here defines a rural area for delivery for a letter carrier 
someplace around the country. It could be Alaska; it could be Delaware. 
As the rural letter carrier covers this area, the technology is 
available so that the residents somewhere along there could pick up a 
package here or leave a package at the general store. They could 
communicate with their customers in any number of ways and provide 
better customer service.
  Additionally, when you walk into a post office these days, for the 
most part they look similar today to what they did 5, 10, 15, 20 years 
ago almost without exception. There are so many things we can do in 
terms of technology to provide better services at post offices that we 
are not doing.
  We can provide better, more efficient services and friendlier 
services as well. We have 25 mail-processing centers in the country. I 
visited one of them with Senator Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota about 3 
or 4 months ago. We visited this small mail-processing center in her 
beautiful State. We went into the back operating area of the mail-
processing center, and there was a fellow there who was about 50 years 
old. He was lugging around these big boxes that somebody was mailing. 
He was carrying them around and trying to get them over to a barcode 
reader, and he was putting them in a huge pouch so they could be 
mailed.
  There is equipment that could readily process big boxes like that, 
smaller packages, and parcels. We don't have equipment like that in 
most of our mail-processing centers. If we did, we could offer better, 
faster, timelier, more cost-effective service.
  So if we were to capitalize the Postal Service, among the things the 
Postal Service could do if they had $30 billion over the next 10 years 
is replace their fleet of 190,000 vehicles with more energy-efficient 
vehicles that are appropriately sized for the kinds of packages they 
deliver. The approximately 300 mail-processing centers could be 
retooled with mail-processing equipment that actually reflects what the 
mail service delivers in the 21st century. The post offices themselves 
could have the kinds of upgrades and technology investments that would 
enable better service as well. That is what the Postal Service could do 
if they had the money.

[[Page S5769]]

  Sometimes when people think of the Postal Service they think the 
Postal Service is not really innovative; they don't come up with a 
bunch of ideas. It turns out that they are even more innovative than I 
and a lot of other people thought they were.
  I want to mention a couple of things they have begun doing that I 
think are noteworthy. They ought to be able to do more. If they could, 
they actually could make money and have the money to make capital 
investments and not be a burden to taxpayers of this country.
  This morning in San Francisco, CA, at around 3 a.m., in 32 ZIP Codes, 
the U.S. Postal Service delivered groceries to people. They delivered 
them to homes, in some cases to businesses, to apartments, to high-
rises. They delivered groceries. They also delivered the mail later in 
the day, but from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. the Postal Service in 32 ZIP Codes 
delivered groceries. They have been doing it for over a month, and I 
understand they are doing it for Amazon. I understand Amazon is pleased 
and the Postal Service is pleased with it. Amazon customers like it, 
and the Postal Service can do this and make money. They are not doing 
anything else with the trucks from 3 a.m. to 7 a.m., and it just works. 
It just works.
  The Postal Service is doing this for Amazon, but they are reaching 
out to 100 grocery chains across the country and saying: This is what 
we do for Amazon in San Francisco. How would you like us to do this for 
you?
  My guess is this will turn into a good piece of business, but they 
need the vehicles to enable them to do this, and they need money for 
capital investment.
  Some people think the only thing the Postal Service has done 
creatively in years is flat-rate boxes. You know, if it fits, it ships. 
It is a great product. It is still growing. It has grown by around 4 or 
5 percent a year. But there are a bunch of other things they can do and 
want to do. They need money for capital investment.
  About a year ago they started delivering for Amazon--not everywhere 
but in a couple hundred ZIP Codes--on Sundays. It worked pretty well. 
And this past Sunday they delivered packages and parcels through 
Amazon--not to 200 ZIP Codes but I think to over 5,000 across the 
country. It enables them to do next-day delivery that includes Sunday. 
It is a nice piece of business and it is growing, but in order to 
continue to grow it, the Postal Service needs vehicles that are right-
sized for that sort of business and a lot of them--potentially a lot of 
them.
  Another thing the Postal Service is doing--and this is a product 
which I have used and a product which I think is going to have growing 
utilization across the country. It is called Priority Mail Express.
  I went to a post office in Delaware not long ago. I wanted to send my 
sister a Mother's Day gift.
  I said: I want this to get there in 2 days.
  They asked: Do you want it insured?
  I said: Not really.
  They said: Well, if you send it by Priority Mail Express, we can 
guarantee delivery in 2 days, we can guarantee delivery in 1 day, or we 
can guarantee delivery in 3 days. We can track it for you for free.
  And I think they said the first $100 of insurance is free.
  I said: This is great. I will take 2 days. The insurance is fine.
  As it turns out, I am not the only person who is using Priority Mail 
Express. It is available not just 2 or 3 days a week, it is available 
for delivery 7 days a week. If somebody has something they want to mail 
this Saturday and have it delivered on Sunday, they can do so with 
Priority Mail Express. They can do it and get next-day delivery. They 
can do it and get free tracking. They can do it and get insurance up to 
$50 or $100 on whatever is being mailed. That is going to be a great 
product. I think it is going to make flat-rate boxes--well, not look 
like a second-class citizen, but it is going to make flat-rate boxes 
look modest by comparison.
  These are the sorts of things our folks at the Postal Service would 
like to do--to deliver not only mail but to deliver groceries, to be 
able to deliver tomorrow, deliver on Sunday. And it is ironic that in a 
day and age that we worry about postal service going from 6 days a week 
to 5, that right now they are a 7-day-a-week operation. I think there 
is reason to believe they will grow even more.
  There are some who say that rather than passing the sort of 
legislation the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee 
reported out on a bipartisan vote earlier this year, there is some 
alternative legislation. We should simply say to the Postal Service: 
You cannot close any more mail-processing centers for another year.
  As it turns out, that is not going to give the Postal Service the 
money to do this, or, frankly, the money to invest in any other number 
of new products that have the great potential of generating revenues 
and enabling them not just to be open or remain alive but to actually 
become vibrant and to be part of our growing economy in this country.
  I wish to close by saying that I am more hopeful about the Postal 
Service than I have been in all the years I have worked on this as an 
issue. As I talked to my colleagues, I am encouraged to hear from 
Democrats and Republicans that they want to be part of the solution, 
and they realize the idea of just leaving the Postal Service twisting 
in the wind for another year is not a good thing.
  If the Postal Service has a choice to say don't close these 60 or 70 
or 80 mail processing centers, that is not what they need. They need to 
not necessarily unleash them--better ensure that they have the 
resources they need to not just right-size the organization but to 
modernize and recapitalize the organization and enable them to do 
things in the 21st century that will actually build off their age-old 
delivery network and find new ways to make money doing so.
  As we close here today--a lot of people are scattering to head back 
to their home States in anticipation of elections and that sort of 
thing, and to do other things--I wanted to mention on a more hopeful 
note, and I say to the members of our committee, and especially to the 
Presiding Officer, thanks for trying to make sure the Postal Service 
continues to be a linchpin within our economy, whether it happens to be 
Alaska, Delaware, or even South Dakota.
  Senator Thune is waiting for me to stop talking.
  They have the opportunity to be a big, important part of our economy 
going forward, and my hope and prayer is that is exactly what we will 
enable them to do.
  With that, I will yield the floor. I don't know if the Senator from 
South Dakota would like to take the floor, but if he wants to, it is 
his.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Dakota.

                          ____________________