[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 5]
[House]
[Page 6358]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           RURAL POST OFFICES

  (Mr. CRAWFORD asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. CRAWFORD. I rise today to highlight a subject that is personal in 
Arkansas's First Congressional District: the proposed closure of 
thousands of rural post offices across the country.
  This week I sent a letter to Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe 
asking him to give the House of Representatives time to pass meaningful 
postal reform legislation. As it stands now, over 3,600 post offices 
are slated for closure on May 15. In my district alone, 100 post 
offices have been put on the closure list.
  In November, I filed the Protecting Our Rural American Post Offices 
Act of 2011. The bill would prohibit the postal service from closing 
rural post offices that do not have an alternative office within 8 
miles accessible by public roads. The bill is an effort to level the 
field between rural and urban post office closures.
  So many of the challenges we face in Washington are not Democrat 
versus Republican, but rather urban versus rural interests. Americans 
living in rural communities rely on their post offices for medicine 
delivery and Social Security benefits and veterans benefits, among 
other things. Access to postal services should not be limited to urban 
families.
  I urge Postmaster General Donahoe to give the House time to pass 
meaningful postal reform legislation. The postal service cannot hope to 
cure all their budget woes on the backs of rural Americans.

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