[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 5]
[House]
[Page 6624]
[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. Mr. Speaker, this week the postal service announced a 
new strategy to keep rural post offices open. My district in Arkansas 
could have lost as many as 100 post offices.
  This new plan from the postal service is not perfect. The retail 
window at many post offices will have limited operating hours. However, 
access to the retail lobby and post office boxes will remain unchanged. 
More importantly, towns will keep their ZIP codes, and community 
identities will be preserved.
  In November of 2011, I introduced H.R. 3370, Protecting Our Rural 
Post Offices Act, which prohibits the postal service from closing rural 
post offices that do not have an alternative office within 8 miles. Now 
that the postal service has announced plans to keep all post offices 
open, Congress can enact reforms that will ensure rural Americans no 
longer have to worry about access to mail services.
  So many of the challenges we face in Washington are not Democrat 
versus Republican; rather, urban versus rural interests. In small 
communities across Arkansas and across the country, the post office 
represents the town identity and lets the world know the community 
exists. If post offices were to completely close and small communities 
no longer had their own ZIP codes, cities' identities would be lost. 
For my part, I will continue efforts to ensure rural Arkansas 
communities keep access to postal services.

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