Industry groups welcomed Senate committee approval of the postal reform bill S. 662 but wondered if there was sufficient time left this year to get a bill passed and overcome President Bush’s opposition to the measure.
On Wednesday, The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs voted 15-1 to send S. 662 to the full Senate.
The Senate bill committee mark contains a number of amendments, including one from that would allow the Postal Service to appeal to the Postal Rate Commission (PRC) the actuarial methodology the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) uses to calculate the USPS’ pension obligations.
“The [Senate] bill is mostly in conformance with H.R. 22 but I don’t see how either of them are going to go anywhere with the administration so dead set against them,” said Gene Del Polito, president of Postcom.
Del Polito also worried about the time frame.
“Congress has just four weeks in session between now and September,” he said, noting that higher profile issues in Congress “just eat away time that should be spent on serious legislative issues.”
Before anything further can happen, both bills have to pass their respective chambers and neither is currently scheduled, he said.
“It was a heroic effort on the part of the Committee members and they deserve a lot of credit,” said Neal Denton, executive director of the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers.
“Senator Collins knew that the White House didn’t like this bill but she knew how much the mailing community was hurting and she stood up and got this passed,” Denton noted.
He added that the bill essentially restores $27 billion in funding for the USPS that the postal service previously had to pay to cover military pension costs for former postal workers. This money had previously been put into an escrow account after it was discovered about two years ago that the USPS had overpaid its obligations to a federal retirement fund to cover military pensions of former postal workers.
Denton said it’s time for mailers to lobby the White House “since most people in Congress have a pretty good understanding of the issues.” “We’re very pleased,” said Jerry Cerasale, senior vice president of the Direct Marketing Association. “This was a necessary step that had to be taken.”
He noted that these bills were passed by their committees earlier than last year’s versions, “so we have more time this year.”
Cerasale hoped discussions could begin soon between Congress and the White House on these bills.
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