President Bush threatened Wednesday to veto a bill that included $875 million for the U.S. Postal Service.
The amended $318 billion defense homeland security appropriation bill included $875 million for the postal service as part of a $5 billion bail out.
Postmaster General John Potter requested the funding to deal with the after effects of Sept. 11 and to purchase equipment to eliminate anthrax and other biological agents from the mail stream.
"If you're going to attach anything else to it, attach it, send it to me, I'll veto it. I'll send it right back to you and then you can go to work," Potter quoted the President as saying. The bill was proposed by Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) and approved Tuesday by the Senate Appropriations Committee.
The bill was endorsed Wednesday by the Direct Marketing Association.
"Given the events of the past few months, Congress needs to appropriate some funding to the Postal Service," said DMA president H. Robert Wientzen, in a statement. "The cost of mail sanitization should not be borne exclusively by postal rate payers. It is a national security and national commerce issue, which should be paid for by the national government."
The DMA warned, however, that this one-time appropriation should not be considered a substitute for the comprehensive legislative reform that the USPS needs to compete.
"This urgently needed one-time payment offsets some of the costs associated with the terrorist attacks on America, but it will not cure what ails the Postal Service," Wientzen said.
Another group, The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste, criticized Byrd's decision to give the postal service funding without requiring that it put in place reform measures.
"There will never be reform at USPS until someone ties government dollars to new management," CAGW vice president Leslie Paige said in a statement. "The current crew has presided over a financial debacle while avoiding hard choices and rejecting any serious change."
Besides providing the USPS with funding, the bill includes $7.5 billion for New York City and other areas hit by the terrorist attacks.
