[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12054-12056]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                 REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Harris). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 5, 2011, the Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 30 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be here 
this evening following my good friends and their interesting 
discussion.
  I wanted to spend a couple of moments this evening talking about 
reform.
  Reform has been a major focus of my public service career beginning 
as a citizen volunteer, working as a State legislator, a local 
official. I was pleased to be part of innovation in my native State of 
Oregon in areas of tax reform, transportation innovation, environmental 
protection, land use, and government structure.
  I am pleased to have been able to take some of the lessons that I 
learned in Oregon here to our Nation's Capital, working in Congress in 
areas of energy, bicycles, flood insurance, health care reform. For me, 
that's exciting and energizing. That's what makes me a little 
disappointed, to say at the very least, with what's happening in this 
session of Congress.
  It's sad to see that today in the House the focus is not taking the 
Affordable Care Act where the questions of its constitutionality have 
been settled by the Supreme Court and moving forward to accelerate its 
implementation. Instead, the efforts are to slow it down, to repeal, to 
put sand in the gears. Not without a constructive alternative mind you, 
but just to be against the reform that's on the books.
  It's depressing to see repeated attacks on environmental protections, 
something that Americans care deeply about that makes a difference to 
the quality of life of our communities, the strength of our economy, 
the health of our families.
  It has been unfortunate that we were given by this Congress earlier 
this year what has been described, I think appropriately, as the most 
partisan transportation bill in history, and certainly the worst, 
undoing 20 years of transportation reform. Luckily, it collapsed under 
its own weight, but we were left with a pale 2-year extension, and 
we're soon going to be right back where we started.
  We're watching, more recently, efforts that deal with agriculture in 
terms of the reauthorization of the farm bill, an opportunity to 
reform, to be able to save money, to improve the health of our citizens 
and the economic viability of America's farmers and ranchers. Instead, 
the bill that has passed out of the committee in the House would 
concentrate even more subsidy in the hands of fewer wealthy farmers and 
short-circuit the needs of Americans who eat, people who care about 
animal welfare, about the environment, and, most importantly, about the 
welfare of the vast majority of American farmers who, sadly, would have 
been shut off.

                              {time}  2100

  It looks now that the bill is so precarious that it may not even come 
to the floor of the House, backtracking on efforts to rein in and 
reform military spending, when just last year there was a bipartisan 
agreement to deal with reducing the deficit that was balanced between 
spending for military and nonmilitary accounts. And now we see people 
retreating from that goal in the military appropriations bill that 
passed, despite aggressive bipartisan efforts to rein it in, and it is 
moving forward as a lost opportunity.
  Well, it's in that context, Mr. Speaker, that I wanted to discuss the 
issues that surround the postal service. It's not by any stretch of the 
imagination that I'm not interested in changing how we do business. I 
think that's important across the board. I have demonstrated that with 
my past work, and by word and deed and what I do politically.
  I often find myself in agreement with some of the editorial positions 
from The Washington Post and The New York Times. They're moving forward 
with an urgent effort to move legislation that would dramatically scale 
down the postal service, to cut a large number of facilities and 
suspend 6-day service, assuming that those are the only alternatives 
available for us going forward.
  Well, as I say, I will be the last person to argue that we should not 
do business differently, but it seems to me that it's past time for us 
to take a step back and take a hard look at this so-called postal 
crisis and at potential solutions and their implications.
  Mr. Speaker, it is important to note, from the outset, that the 
postal service has played a vital role in the development of the United 
States. It dates back to the beginning of our country. The first 
Postmaster General was Benjamin Franklin. The service was established 
236 years ago. And the postal service actually has been involved, when 
we let it, with a variety of innovations.
  There are those who are concerned that today, with the advent of 
email, that it has somehow made it impossible for the postal service to 
move forward in this climate. Well, it's interesting. The postal 
service has been able to survive the telegraph, the fax machine. It 
has, in fact, been part of the innovation. Airmail service was part of 
what the postal service did to help launch the aviation industry in 
this country. And we have, today, a pattern of development of the 
transcontinental railroad service and the nature of the postal service, 
itself, tying together American communities.
  Part of what I think is important for us to focus on is the role that 
the postal service plays in rural and small town America. It's an 
important part of rural and small town America in Oregon and around the 
Nation, and these communities are facing times of economic stress and 
isolation.
  The post office plays an outside role. Many people revel in the 
quality of life. It's very desirable in many rural and small town 
areas, with great traditions. But it's no secret that for many 
communities and the people who live there, it's a struggle. They have 
high unemployment, as young people leave and the population ages. There 
are real challenges in terms of connectivity, access to broadband for 
over 26.2 million

[[Page 12055]]

Americans, three-quarters of them living in rural America.
  Now, I think it is important moving forward, dealing with the changes 
to the postal service, to think about the implications for this part of 
America that often gets lots of rhetoric but not the attention that it 
deserves.
  The postal service in rural and small town America provides services 
in terms of people being able to get access to not just mail services 
and a sense of community, tying people together, a sense of identity, 
but it is a source of good-paying, family wage jobs that play an 
outside role in this part of the United States.
  It is important in terms of being able to access immigration forms, 
passport services. These are items that are, in some instances, 
difficult for people in rural and small town America.
  And also, as we are watching the explosion of online shopping, which 
is playing a larger and larger role in the American economy, it's even 
more significant in rural and small town America. The postal service 
often provides that last mile for transactions that take place via the 
Internet--increasingly for senior citizens who rely on mail order 
pharmacy services to be able to get their prescriptions through the 
mail.
  Looking at the wide range of activities that make a difference for 
rural and small town America, I think it's important for us to consider 
what the implications are going to be for them.
  Now, there are those that say, well, wait a minute. They'll just have 
to pay the price because we are facing a funding crisis in the post 
office. It's bumping up against a $15 billion debt limit. Bills are 
coming due. And we have no alternative but to move forward with 
dramatic reductions in service, including Saturday service and closing 
facilities.
  Well, it's important to reflect on what is the nature of the current 
funding crisis that faces the post office. Sadly, it is largely a 
manufactured crisis. The impending funding deadline is simply a result 
of the legislation in 2006, which was a compromise--a reluctant 
compromise, but it included a provision that would require the postal 
service to prefund its health insurance costs for retirees who haven't 
yet been hired--75 years in the future--and required that funding to be 
made over the course of 10 years.
  Well, thinking about that for a moment, Mr. Speaker, this is actually 
a device that is not necessary. No other business or government agency 
is required to do it 75 years into the future. And, in fact, part of 
the charm for the people who devised this a few years ago was it 
actually artificially reduces the Federal Government deficit because 
these payments are credited to Federal accounts. Even though the post 
office has been an independent agency since 1971, operating without 
subsidy, these moneys are credited to the Federal Treasury and are used 
to try to disguise the true size of our deficit. There is no reason to 
accelerate the prefunding of this obligation of 75 years to make it 
occur here in the course of this 10-year window.
  Mr. Speaker, I think it's important to point out, after putting it in 
this context, that this is an artificial crisis. The post office, if it 
weren't for this extraordinary, unnecessary, and unprecedented 
prefunding requirement, would actually not be hemorrhaging red ink. In 
fact, it's very close to being self-sufficient, and it does so despite 
the constraints that Congress has placed on the postal service. 
Because, bear in mind, even though it doesn't get support, the Congress 
has kept a very short leash on what the postal service can do. It 
doesn't have the flexibility to run like a business, to adjust its 
pricing, to be able to adjust its product mix, to take advantage of the 
fact that there is a skilled workforce of over 500,000 people and has 
more facilities around the country than McDonald's, Walmart, and 
Starbucks combined.

                              {time}  2110

  We don't give them the freedom and the flexibility to move forward to 
take advantage of that platform.
  Now, you don't have to be very creative to think of ways that we 
might be able to work together to be able to slightly modify the 
services that are provided, and give them more flexibility on the 
implementation of their service. It is important, I think, to be able 
to think about what this connectivity means for the American public. If 
we somehow eliminated the postal service, turned it over to the private 
sector, cut down more dramatically in terms of what the offerings are, 
does anybody think we would be able to send a first-class letter from 
the Florida Keys to Nome, Alaska for 44 cents? The post office moves 
about 40 percent of the mail in the entire world.
  Now there are those that say look at Germany, it has been privatized. 
Well, look at Germany. Germany is a country that is smaller than 
Montana, bigger than Wyoming, just to put it in the context of size. It 
is very densely populated, and it still charges more than 10 percent 
higher than we do in the United States, and they are competitive 
internationally, globally. The German postal service is doing business 
in the United States, competing with Fed Ex, our postal service, and 
UPS. It is an extraordinary resource that I think is worthy of 
consideration of what we've got and how we do it.
  Mr. Speaker, as I stated from the outset, I happen to believe in 
reform. I believe that we need to do business differently, whether it 
is how we deal with our farm policy, our military policy, tax reform, 
health care. I would hope that in Congress we can return to the days 
where we actually had regular order and we discussed things like this 
in committee, that every bill wasn't a partisan vehicle, and when there 
was give and take and challenging one another in terms of ways it could 
be done better, and listening to a wide variety of opinions. And I say 
by all means allow a wide variety of opinions to come forward to talk 
about the future of the postal service. I think that's healthy. I 
welcome it. I've spent a lot of time talking to people on the Postal 
Rate Commission. I've talked to leadership in the management of the 
postal service, postal employees, people who are customers, and 
competitors of the postal service. I want to explore these issues.
  I'm absolutely convinced that the interests that are involved with 
the postal service, broadly defined, including its unions and 
employees, understand that there is going to be more change taking 
place in the future. That there are some adjustments where there is 
probably more capacity than we need, there will be changes going 
forward. We want to be careful and selective about what we do. But I go 
back to my point about the impact it will have on rural and small town 
America. I want to be sure that the changes that we undertake don't 
make great difficulty for people who don't have the access that some of 
us who live in metropolitan areas have, people who are connected to the 
Internet and people who have ready access to other resources.
  I think it is important that when people are talking about reducing 
the sixth day of service, that they think about the implications for 
individuals who depend on that. For many people who work and get 
packages that are important to them, being able to have them delivered 
on Saturday is important, and particularly when you look at holidays 
that go over weekends, the difficulty of delivery of things like 
medicine is not a trivial question. And the fact that the postal 
service is in a sense a partner with some of its private sector 
competitors, cutting back on that service, what it does with those 
competitor-partners and what it does with people who are marketing 
through the Internet, through the mail, this needs careful 
consideration.
  It is interesting as people dive into the numbers behind the 
elimination of Saturday service. You're eliminating 17 percent of the 
postal capacity and it would only save 2, maybe 3 percent, and there 
would be costs associated with that. It is kind of interesting. I would 
like us to think about what it does to the business model, if you're 
going to eliminate 17 percent of the service and you save a couple 
percent in operation; particularly, as I mentioned, that we constrain 
what they

[[Page 12056]]

charge and we have an artificial financial barrier with the 75-year 
pre-funding of health care.
  I think it is important for us to respect what we've got, think about 
the alternatives, and have a discussion where the interests--whether 
they are direct mail, they are marketing, they are online shopping, 
they are people in terms of the pharmaceutical industry, senior 
citizens, rural and small town America--let's get in and talk about 
this, find out not by declaring war against postal employees, but 
working with them in a cooperative fashion to find out suggestions that 
they have in terms of moving forward, and looking at what this 
tremendous resource that we have, what the value is.
  I'm in the State of Oregon, where now all of our ballots are done by 
direct mail. It is a way to improve efficiency and lower cost for local 
governments. Broader application of mail-in ballots would improve the 
security, the efficiency, and cost savings. We have barely scratched 
the surface of that.
  There have been deep concerns, and I note that we had a somber 
observance today about the death of a couple of our employees, guards 
who were gunned down on this day in 1998. We've lived through eras 
where there were concerns about anthrax, about opportunities that some 
may be involved with bioterrorism. And there have been scares about 
pandemics. Well, it may well be in our future that there would be great 
value to having a network that reaches 150 million addresses six times 
a week with a skilled workforce that can turn that around in a matter 
of hours.
  You don't have to stretch your imagination very far to think of acts 
of disease or terror where that network may well make a difference. 
We're finding oftentimes in communities that it's the postal worker who 
is alert to problems within a family or somebody that is missing and 
not showing up. They are eyes and ears that do not just volunteer 
projects but connect people. Let's think about the value of that 
network before we start to unravel it.
  Mr. Speaker, I will conclude where I began. I think everybody whose 
is privileged to serve in this Chamber needs to think about how we do 
business differently. I think we need to be open to arguments, 
questions, evidence, to be able to squeeze more value out of the public 
dollar, to use the resources to protect the vitality and livability of 
our communities, and to build partnerships and relationships. And I 
welcome the discussion that we're having with the postal service in the 
media and here in Congress. But I would hope, Mr. Speaker, we could do 
it in a way that is thoughtful and broad-based. I would hope that we 
would be able to look at what the postal service has provided for 236 
years. I would hope that we would think about the value of the 
workforce. It's not just over a half-million family wage jobs that 
makes a big difference, particularly in small town and rural America, 
but these are people who have a skill set and a distribution across the 
country which has other values, some of which I have just mentioned, 
and others we have not explored.
  And last but not least, before we make changes, I think we ought to 
be sure that we know that they are going to get what is advertised 
because, despite all of the rhetoric, we have the lowest cost, most 
efficient postal service in the world, moving 40 percent of the 
traffic, doing it very cost effectively, despite the fact that 
Congress, in its wisdom, has tied the hands of the postal service, 
dictated rates, told them what they could close or not close, and 
changes course repeatedly.

                              {time}  2120

  I would hope we could do a better job working with our partners there 
and the people who depend on it to make this part of an area where we 
figure out how to do business differently, because I think there are 
opportunities not only to save money but to take advantage of this 
resource. I think it ought to be done thoughtfully, I think it ought to 
be done soon, and I appreciate the opportunity to discuss it here this 
evening.
  I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________