Susan Collins

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, I support this amendment. There is an inexcusable backlog at OPM in processing the application for retirement benefits. It has caused real hardships for some retired Federal employees and postal employees. This bill will obviously increase the number of postal employees who will be seeking retirement benefits so I think it is important we have the kind of reporting the Senator from Virginia has proposed. I urge acceptance of the amendment. I urge it be accepted by the voice vote.

Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, first let me commend the Senator from Missouri for this amendment. It does make a great deal of sense to have the hardship exemption and to give more time for individuals who are injured in war zones and longer deadlines for the paperwork for those individuals who might have trouble submitting the paperwork from a war zone. We are talking about civilian employees who are deployed there. This amendment makes a great deal of sense, and I urge that it be accepted by a voice vote.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, this is a commonsense amendment. It would limit the number of post offices in the Capitol Complex to one on each side--one in the House and one in the Senate. It does not affect the processing of mail out of the Capitol, and I believe we should accept the amendment. I urge that we accept the amendment by a voice vote.

Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, I believe the odds of our getting the 60 votes for final passage are increased if I make my statement later, rather than delivering it right now. I will deliver my statement after the vote, but I do wish to thank Senator Lieberman, Senator Scott Brown, Senator Carper, all the staffs who have worked so hard. Today, assuming we get those 60 votes, we have proven the Senate can tackle an enormous problem in a bipartisan way and make real progress on an issue that matters to our economy and to the American people. Thank you, Madam President.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I too support the amendment and urge its adoption.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, this amendment would strip from the postal workers the right to collectively bargain. This is an enormous change in labor law. Postal workers have had the right to engage in collective bargaining for more than 30 years. We did make changes in this bill in the arbitration process. We made sure if a contract dispute goes to arbitration, the arbitrator has to consider the financial condition of the Postal Service. That will help bring balance into the system. But there is no justification for completely removing the right of workers to collectively bargain. I urge we reject the amendment.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, there are at least three problems with the amendment offered by the Senator from Kentucky. The first is a practical problem. How is the Postal Service going to deal with a situation where at one house there is a monopoly on the use of the post office box and at the next house there is not a monopoly? How is that going to work? Second, mail often contains highly sensitive pieces, such as medical records, bills, personal correspondence. Continuation of the mailbox monopoly is necessary to preserve the safety, the security, and the privacy of mail. The third argument is that if you repeal the mailbox monopoly, you will leave rural America behind. There will be plenty of competition in large cities, but who will be left to serve rural America? Only the Postal Service. And that will further drive up its costs because it will be losing customers. I strongly urge opposition to this amendment.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, let me repeat for my colleagues one more time: There are no taxpayer dollars authorized by this bill or appropriated by this bill. The score is caused by the unique status the postal service accounts have within the unified budget. The operational accounts are off budget. The employee health benefits and retiree accounts are on budget because those accounts are also used by Federal agencies. Let me again quote from the inspector general who explains the system very well. He says the source of the Federal employee retirement funding comes from two streams of revenue. First, the U.S. Postal Service contributes 11.9 percent of the employees' salaries to the fund and the employees contribute .8 percent. The postal service's contribution comes from revenue paid for postage, and this money comes from ratepayers. The employee contribution is made in exchange for a defined benefit. There are no tax dollars authorized or appropriated by this bill. It is a quirk of the way the unified budget works. And that is why we should vote to waive this point of order. We are not talking about taxpayer dollars here. I thank the Chair.

Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, first, I congratulate my colleague from Maine for an excellent amendment. As she indicated, the Postal Service made a major miscalculation, a mathematical error, in the study it did on the Hampden processing center in our State. So that Senators know, the amendment would say if a proposed consolidation of a mail processing center is appealed to the Postal Regulatory Commission, the Commission can be asked to review the underlying study's methodology and the estimated savings to make sure it is correct because right now there is no way to challenge a mistake that is made by the Postal Service in conducting these very important studies that are going to decide whether processing centers stay open. I commend my colleague from Maine for a very well thought out amendment, and I urge its adoption by voice vote.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, this amendment by the Senator from Oklahoma is right in line with the bill. We do encourage the Postal Service to look at colocations--for example, in a local pharmacy or a grocery store. In many small communities, that may well be a viable option, and it may well improve customer access. So I think this is a very good amendment that is in line with other language already in the bill. I urge its adoption by a voice vote.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, the score for the substitute is incredibly misleading. As the Postal Service has told us, this bill would save the Postal Service $19 billion, and that would return it to profitability. The problem is the unique status of the Postal Service in that it is off-budget for operations but on-budget for workers' benefits accounts. This is true despite the fact that these accounts the Postal Service pays into are not funded with tax dollars. The postal employees are contributing. The Postal Service, from its revenue, is contributing. For the retirement accounts, we are not talking about tax dollars from the Postal Service. These are contributions from the postal employees and by the Postal Service from its revenues. But because of the unified budget, it is considered to be an on-budget status for these benefit accounts--most likely because they are shared with other Federal agencies that are using tax dollars. I urge my colleagues to vote for the motions to waive. If they do not and this bill falls, it will spell the end of the Postal Service.

Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, this amendment would also take $8.9 billion that is supposed to go to pay for retiree health benefits of postal workers and instead redirect those funds to maintain 6-days-a- week delivery of the mail. I hope we always have 6-days-a-week delivery. I think that is an asset. I think we should strive to preserve it. That is why our bill prohibits going to 5-day delivery for 2 years, to wring all the waste out of the system.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, let me just reinforce that this is not giving collective bargaining rights to postmasters or to postal supervisors. I support Senator Akaka's amendment. All it is trying to do is strengthen a provision that is in current law that asks for the Postmaster General to consult with the postmasters and the other supervisory organizations when there are changes made in work schedules or benefits. They should have the right to have their views heard. It does not give them a veto. It does not authorize collective bargaining or contract negotiations in any way. I wish to emphasize that because there has been misinformation about what this amendment, in fact, entails. I support this amendment and I urge its adoption.

Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, this amendment would strike the Federal workers' compensation title in the bill and replace it with very minor provisions that provide no significant cost savings. The amendment would strike the reforms that bring parity between workers' comp benefits and retirement benefits for Federal workers. It makes it much more comparable to the States' workers' comp plans. The Federal plan is more generous than any State plan. The amendment does nothing to combat the rampant fraud nor constrain costs which have increased by $1 billion. In the current workers' comp program, we have 2,000 postal employees who are over age 70; we have 6 Federal workers who are age 100 or older. These individuals are not coming back to work. We are trying to focus this program, as it should be, on returning injured workers to work. It is very similar to the proposals that the Obama administration has made. It grandfathers in everyone for 3 years as well as those age 65 and older.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I too support the amendment offered by Senator Tester and Senator Levin. It simply makes clear that the Postal Regulatory Commission may review an appeal of a post office closure if it violates either the overnight delivery service standard or the retail service standards that are created by our bill. So I urge support for the amendment.

Ms. COLLINS. Madam President, while I think the changes the Senator has made in his amendment do improve it considerably, I am still very concerned about the idea of imposing a mandatory retirement system, and let me tell you why. First, to me, it smacks of age discrimination in some cases. Second, we could be losing some of our most experienced and best personnel we need to implement the major changes that are authorized by this bill. Third and finally, I find it a little odd that we would want to tell people who are still in their working years and have had a good career and are contributing and are good employees that we do not want them to work anymore. I think the approach in our bill of offering incentives is a better way to go.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I strongly support this amendment. I wish to commend the Senator from Oklahoma for offering an amendment that would prohibit the kind of lavish spending on Federal conferences we have seen recently at GSA. So this is an excellent amendment. It will save money, provide more transparency, and put a cap on how much can be spent. I urge adoption of the amendment.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I am only going to speak very briefly. I wish to shine a spotlight on a provision of Senator McCain's substitute that has not yet been discussed that actually raises constitutional issues. All of us believe the labor force of the Postal Service is too large and unfortunately will have to be reduced, and we do that through a system of buyouts and retirement incentives through a compassionate means very similar to the way a large corporation would handle the downsizing of its employees. But Senator McCain's alternative takes a very different approach. It would have this new control board that would be created to impose on the Postal Service an obligation to renegotiate existing contracts to get rid of the no-layoff provision. I will say I was very surprised when the Postmaster General signed the kinds of contracts he did this spring. The fact is Senator McCain's amendment--section 304 of which amends section 1206 of existing law-- requires existing contracts to be renegotiated. That creates constitutional questions. The potential constitutional issue derives from the contracts clause of article I, which prohibits States from passing laws impairing the obligation of contracts. Of course, this provision does not apply to the Federal Government. The Congressional Research Service has explained in a memorandum to me on this topic in July of 2011 that the due process clause of the fifth amendment has been held to provide some measure of protection against the Federal Government impairing its own contracts. I ask unanimous consent that the CRS memorandum I just referred to be printed in the Record.

Ms. COLLINS. There is also a Supreme Court case, Lynch v. The United States, which makes clear that the due process clause prohibits the Federal Government from annulling its contracts and the United States is as much bound by its contracts as are private individuals. In the landmark case of U.S. v. Winstar decided in 1996, the Supreme Court cited Lynch for the proposition that the Federal Government ``has some capacity to make agreements binding future Congresses by creating vested rights,'' even though the Contract Clause does not directly apply. Obviously, one Congress cannot bind another, and no Federal agency can bargain away the right of Congress to legislate in the name of the people. But no one would ever sign a contract with an instrumentality of the Federal Government if that contract could be rewritten by Congress at will. Recognizing this, the courts have distinguished between acts which affect contracts in general, where the Federal Government is exercising its sovereign powers, and acts directly altering the obligations of contracts to which the Federal Government is itself a party. The Winstar case I mentioned before illustrates this distinction. Winstar was brought by a financially healthy Savings & Loan institution that was asked by Federal regulators to take over failing thrifts during the S&L crisis of the 1980s. After Winstar entered into a contract with the Federal Savings & Loan Insurance Corporation stipulating that it could count the ``goodwill'' of the thrifts it took over to offset the liabilities it was assuming, Congress changed the underlying law. Based on that change, the regulators reneged, declared Winstar ``inadequately capitalized,'' and seized its assets. In that case, the Supreme Court held that even though Congress had the right to change the law in general, the Federal Government could still be liable for breach of contract it had entered into with Winstar, and for damages. I am concerned that if the Postal Service reopens and renegotiates its collective bargaining agreements to comply with the McCain amendment, courts could find the Postal Service in breach of those agreements, and force it to pay damages. At a minimum, it strikes me that Senator McCain's language could tie up the Postal Service in litigation for years, which would defeat our efforts to reduce the workforce costs faced by the Postal Service. Bottom line: I am very concerned that if the Postal Service is forced by the McCain substitute to reopen and renegotiate current collective bargaining agreements, the courts would find the Postal Service in breach of those agreements and force it to pay damages and also that it would be found to be unconstitutional. The approach we have taken does not raise those constitutional concerns. It does not have Congress stepping in to abrogate contracts, which is a very serious and potentially unconstitutional step for us to take. Finally, I would say I agree with everything my chairman has said. Senator McCain's amendment does not address the true problems of the Postal Service. Instead, it assumes that the Postal Service is obsolete, that they cannot be saved, and that we should just preside over its demise. I reject that approach. Thank you, Mr. President.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum, but I will be responding.

Ms. COLLINS. I thank the chairman. Mr. President, we are going to resume debate today on the postal reform legislation our committee, on which the Presiding Officer serves, has worked very hard to produce and to do so in a bipartisan way. As Chairman Lieberman has indicated, last week, we labored very hard to produce a list of amendments that will allow Members to work their will on this legislation. There are many different viewpoints on the path forward for the Postal Service, but there can be no doubt about one fact: The Postal Service has lost more than $13 billion in the last 2 years. Despite being relieved from a payment that is required under law toward the health benefits of future retirees, it still lost billions of dollars. If we fail to act, if we turn down this bill, the Postal Service will not survive as we know it today, and that is a fact. The Postal Service, later this year, will have great difficulty even meeting its payroll if we do not act. The Postal Service will max out on its credit that it can borrow from the Treasury if we do not act. The Postal Service will be forced to resort to dramatic and Draconian service cuts that will drive still more customers from the system if we do not act. So just closing our eyes and pretending somehow the Postal Service will find a way through this, without our legislation, is not a realistic option. As I have indicated, there are a variety of views on both sides of the aisle on what the appropriate path forward should be, and we will have a vigorous debate today--we started it last week--on what the best option is for the Postal Service. For me, the bottom line is this: The Postal Service will not survive if it pursues a course that risks alienating the remaining customers it does have. So resorting to widespread closures of postal processing plants, which would essentially do away with overnight delivery of mail, and raising prices so big mailers pursue alternatives to using the Postal Service for delivery are not the solutions to the Postal Service's woes. On the other hand, the Postal Service clearly cannot continue to do business as usual. It has to innovate. It has to look for new sources of revenue, and we have given some very specific ideas in our bill by allowing, for example, the Postal Service to provide services and share space with Federal, State, and local governments and to also ship beer and wine with a signature from the customer, just as its competitors, FedEx and UPS--United Parcel Service--are able to do. We also do not prohibit the closure of all post offices, nor do we mandate a certain number be closed; instead, we set standards. We set service standards, and those service standards would govern the decisions the Postal Service would make. I think that is the appropriate way to approach the very difficult issue of how to reduce the infrastructure of the Postal Service. But the fact remains--and it is a painful fact--that 80 percent of the Postal Service's budget is workforce related. It is always difficult to recognize when a workforce, particularly one as dedicated as the American Postal Service workforce, is simply too big for the volume of work the Postal Service now has. But there are compassionate ways to deal with this workforce problem, and our bill allows for a refund of an $11 billion overpayment the Postal Service has made to the Federal Employees Retirement System--known as the FERS system. This is an overpayment that has been verified by an independent board of private actuaries the Office of Personnel Management relies upon. It has also been verified by the Government Accountability Office. This overpayment, in part, can be used and would be directed to be used by the Postmaster General to offer retirement incentives and buyouts up to and capped at $25,000, the exact same number that is used in buyouts in Federal agencies to reduce the workforce. More than one-third of the Postal Service's employees are eligible for retirement today. That is why the Postmaster General believes, if he provides a bit of an incentive, he can reduce the size of the Postal Service workforce by more than 100,000 workers. That is about 18 percent of the entire workforce. That approach of using retirement incentives, buyouts, and incentives such as that is very similar to the approach the private sector uses, that large corporations use when they are faced with the painful task of having to downsize their workforce. The rest of the overpayment refund would be used to pay down debt, something the Postal Service desperately needs to do as it approaches that $15 billion line-of-credit cap. I wish to stress--because there is going to be a lot of discussion about this, perhaps very shortly--these are not tax dollars being refunded to the Postal Service. I read from a letter from the inspector general on the floor last week that verifies the revenues for the FERS payment come from two sources: They come from the postal employees themselves who contribute to the FERS system, and the revenues come from the Postal Service's own revenues, which are from selling stamps, mailing packages, and the other services the Postal Service provides. This is not a taxpayer bailout. It is not a refund of taxpayer dollars. This is a refund of a substantial overpayment of money from the Postal Service's employees and the Postal Service itself, from revenues it generated, to the FERS system that never should have occurred. That is another whole issue--of how it occurred. This overpayment has been confirmed by the GAO and by an independent board of actuaries hired by the Office of Personnel Management. That is a very important part of this bill. If the Postmaster General is successful--as I believe he will be if he aggressively implements these provisions in compassionately reducing the size of the workforce--the estimates are that provision alone would save about $8 billion a year, and it would allow the Postmaster General to right size many of the processing plants. Some of the processing plants are too big for the volume they now have. But the answer is not to close them altogether because that has such a detrimental impact on the delivery of mail, and that leaves rural America behind. That would result in there no longer being overnight delivery for first-class mail. Let me give an example from my State, where the Postmaster General has unwisely proposed closing one of only two processing plants we have in a State as large as the State of Maine. He would keep the one in the southernmost tip of the State but close the one in Hampden, ME, which serves northern, central and eastern and parts of western Maine. It serves about two-thirds of the geography of the State. If that postal processing plant were to close, mail from northern Maine--being sent from one community in northern Maine to another--would have to undergo a more than 600-mile round trip to the one remaining processing plant in Maine. I can't imagine how many days that would take, but I am certain it would cause people to stop using the mail, and, thus, revenue would decline still further because there would be no possibility of overnight delivery of bill payments, for example, or bill delivery. This is not the answer. So what is the answer? That plant could be downsized, not closed. We need to preserve the service. If the plant is too large now for the volume of mail that goes through the plant, why doesn't the Postal Service rent out part of the plant? I am sure a mailer in the area--perhaps several mailers in the area--would welcome the opportunity to rent space in that building and be right next to the postal processing plant. That would work very well. There are so many options, but the Postmaster General, in my view, has not pursued those options. When it comes to rural post offices, there are so many options. For example, a post office could be open in a rural community, say, from 7:00 to 9:00 in the morning and 5:00 to 7:00 at night so that individuals going to and from work could stop and do their business, but the Postal Service would still be able to save funds by not having the post office open the entire day. A small post office could be colocated in a retail facility--the local pharmacy, perhaps, or the local grocery store. There are possibilities which need to be explored--and which our bill directs the Postmaster General to explore--in order to avoid the widespread closure of post offices in rural America that will have a detrimental impact on the individuals and the businesses located there. Our bill in essence forces more creativity on the Postal Service by again setting standards with the Postal Regulatory Commission, which is the regulator in this case, and then ensuring that the actions of the Postal Service with regard to infrastructure meet those standards. This bill has many other provisions that we discussed at length last week, so I am not going to repeat them now, but let me reiterate the point I made at the beginning of my remarks. We have been able to negotiate, with the cooperation of both the majority leader and the Republican leader and with a lot of hard work by the members of the committee and the floor staff and our staff, a very fair process that will allow many amendments to be offered, expressing a wide variety of philosophies and views on the proper road ahead. But what we cannot do is fail to act. If we do not act, that will be a death sentence for the Postal Service--an American institution enshrined in our Constitution that is the linchpin of a $1 trillion mailing industry that employs 8.7 million Americans. This debate is not just about rural post offices, important though they are. It is about our economy and not delivering a death blow to an institution that is the center of much of our economy. I hope Members keep that in mind as they come to the floor with proposals, for example, to essentially privatize the Postal Service or to do away with most of its infrastructure because if those amendments prevail, they will deliver a crushing blow to our economy at a time when we can least afford it, and they will jeopardize that trillion-dollar mailing industry that includes everything from paper manufacturers, to magazine publishers, to newspapers, to financial services--all of these industries that are so dependent on the U.S. Postal Service--and that is an outcome we must avoid.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I have the greatest respect for the Senator from Hawaii. I know he cares deeply about this issue. But it is simply time for us to reform the Federal workers' compensation program for postal workers and for other Federal workers. For this reason, I oppose his amendment because it does not begin to solve the problems that have been repeatedly documented in the program by the inspectors general at the Postal Service, at the Department of Labor, by GAO, and by the Obama administration, which has called for many of the reforms we have incorporated into this bill. Senator Akaka's amendment takes on only very minor reforms which are already included in the bill. It does not even attempt to constrain the rapidly growing costs of the program, and it truly does nothing to effectively combat the fraud in the program. Let me start with some background to show the growing, the escalating cost of the Federal workers' compensation system. From 1997 to 2009, the program's costs grew by an astonishing $1 billion, as this chart shows. That was a 52-percent increase in program expenditures. It is one of the reasons why President Obama's administration has submitted changes to this program over and over. Our bill, according to the CBO, would reduce the program's outlays for workers' comp by $1.2 billion over the next 10 years. I note the Obama administration supports across-the-board reforms, just as we have put in our bill. It makes no sense to have one system for postal workers and one system for Federal employees when they all participate in the same program now. The Postal Service, however, makes up more than 40 percent of all workers' comp cases for the Government, and the number of postal employees on the long-term rolls has increased by 62 percent since 2009. Paying more than $1 billion a year in workers' comp payments, the Postal Service is the largest program participant, providing over one-third of the program's budget. These changes are supported by the leaders at the Postal Service. The amendment would block desperately needed reforms to a program that has not been updated in over 35 years. Let me talk a little bit about the structure of benefits in the program and why there is a problem. Under the current program, a worker who has dependents and is out on workers' comp receives a payment at the rate of 75 percent of his preinjury salary, and these benefits are tax free. Currently, more than 70 percent of beneficiaries are receiving compensation at that level. In addition to that, it is important to understand that 75-percent tax-free benefit rate is higher than that paid by any comparable State workers' compensation system and, given our current Tax Code, 75 percent of salary tax free is equivalent, for most people, to a full salary after taxes. We do want to make sure we have a workers' comp program that takes care of our injured workers that is compassionate, that helps them recover and return to work. But the current program of the Federal Government does not accomplish those roles. First of all, it does not encourage injured workers to get the help they need to recover and to return to work, as these statistics will demonstrate. Right now, the program, across the board, Federal and postal workers, has 10,000 beneficiaries age 70 or older, 2,000 of whom are postal employees. They are receiving higher payments on workers' comp than they would under the standard retirement program. That is almost one-quarter of all beneficiaries in the program who are over age 70. Of the beneficiaries, 430 of them are over age 90, and 6 of the workers' comp beneficiaries are age 100 or older. These employees are not going back to work. If they were still working, it would be a miracle. They would be retired. It is not fair to postal and Federal employees who work their entire lives, retire at age 60 or 65, and receive a retirement benefit that is 26 percent lower than the median benefit received by workers' compensation recipients. That is unfair. That means people who remain on workers' comp make more money than if they had continued working and much more than they would make in the retirement systems for Federal and postal workers. I wish to make sure that as we reform the system, we are fair. One of the major reforms is to move people at age 65 from workers' comp to the normal retirement system, but we have exempted from these reforms those who are least able to prepare for it, those who are totally disabled and unable to return to work, and those who are age 65 and over. I think that is a very fair approach. Another protection we have included for those current claimants who would be affected by the reforms in the bill is a 3-year waiting period. If a claimant is not already grandfathered and therefore is not disabled and unable to return to work, then that individual would experience no reduction in benefits for 3 years, regardless of that individual's age. Again, the reforms we have included in our bill closely track the reforms proposed by President Obama's administration. Finally, let me just say this program has proven to be highly vulnerable to fraud. GAO reported as recently as November that the vulnerabilities in the program increase the risk of claimants receiving benefits they are not entitled to. There are many reasons for that. I will go into that further at another time. But the Department of Labor inspector general reported that the removal of a single fraudulent claim saves, on average, between $300,000 and $500,000. What is more, these vulnerabilities are not new and they are not rare. When the IG looked at 10,000 claimant files one decade ago, there were irregularities in almost 75 percent of them, and it resulted in benefits being reduced or ended for more than 50 claimants. This is a troubled program. It needs to be reformed. It needs to be made more fair. It needs to be more fair to individual workers. There needs to be more of a focus on return to work, and it needs to be more fair to workers who spend their entire careers working for the Postal Service or the Federal Government and then retire and receive a far lower benefit than an elderly individual who remains on workers' comp. I urge the defeat of the amendment.

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, it pains me greatly to disagree with my friend and colleague from Tennessee, with whom I have a great friendship and great respect, but what he is essentially offering comes pretty close to a complete substitute for the provisions in our bill, and I wish to go through the provisions to make sure our colleagues understand fully what the choices are that are presented by Senator Corker's amendment. First, let me say I do strongly oppose his amendment because of the impact I believe it would have on postal customers, whether they are in rural America, whether they are a big mailer, a small mailer, a residence or a business, and what the impact ultimately will be on postal revenue. Let us first discuss the issue of 6-day delivery. There are a lot of different views on this issue. Senator Corker has presented one, as has Senator McCain, of moving immediately to 5-day delivery. On the other hand, there are Members who have filed amendments who want to prevent the Postal Service from ever moving to 5-day delivery. Here is what is in our bill. Our bill recognizes the Postal Service should, if possible, avoid deep cuts in its service. Certainly, eliminating 1 day a week of delivery is a deep cut in the service it is providing. It recognizes, however, that if the Postal Service cannot wring out the excessive cost that is in its current system, it may have no choice but to eliminate Saturday delivery in order to become solvent. What we do is allow a 2-year period during which time the Postal Service would implement the many cost-saving provisions in our bill, including a workforce reduction of 18 percent--which is about 100,000 employees--through compassionate means, such as buyouts and retirement incentives, and then have the GAO and the PRC--the Postal Regulatory Commission--certify that despite undertaking all these cost-saving moves, it is not possible for the Postal Service to return to solvency without this deep service cut. But to move immediately to eliminating Saturday delivery would come at a real cost and it may not be necessary. It may not be necessary at all. I would also point out the experts in this area are the members of the Postal Regulatory Commission. The experts are not at CBO. The experts are the regulators of the Postal Service--the PRC. When the PRC examined the issue of eliminating Saturday delivery, here is what it found. First of all, it found the potential savings were far less than the Postal Service estimated. In fact, they were half as much as the Postal Service estimated. Second, they found that eliminating Saturday delivery put rural America, in particular, at a disadvantage because rural America often does not have access to broadband, to Internet services, and to alternative delivery systems. So the PRC, which looked at this issue very carefully and issued a report, found the savings were less by half and the consequences were far more severe for rural America. Saturday delivery also gives the Postal Service itself a competitive advantage over nonpostal alternatives. If we are here trying to save the Postal Service, why would we jeopardize an asset the Postal Service has that its competitors do not? That is why we came up with this carefully crafted compromise on this issue. I believe cutting Saturday delivery should be the last resort, not the first option, because it will inevitably drive away customers. That is one reason the American Newspaper Association is so opposed to doing away with Saturday delivery. It is one reason many of the mail order pharmaceutical companies are so opposed, because many seniors depend on receiving their vital medications through the mail. Again, we have said if there are no other alternatives, this measure could proceed. But I can't imagine any large business operating this way--cutting service first. My colleagues often talk about how important it is to let the Postal Service act like a ``real business.'' But this is the last thing a real business would do. Real businesses know their most valuable asset is their customer base. Businesses do literally everything else before slashing service and raising prices or anything else that might alienate or drive away their remaining customers, and they do not do this out of the goodness of their hearts but because they understand what drives their bottom line. The fact is, if more customers leave the Postal Service, the revenue will plummet. Again, reducing service--eliminating Saturday delivery-- should be the last resort, not the first option. That is exactly what our bill does. The Senator's amendment would also repeal the CPI link to postal rates. I am at a loss as to why the Senator would propose that. Eliminating that protection, that orderly system, would be devastating for many mailers. Again, mailers need predictable, steady, stable rates. Think of a catalog company that prints its catalogs so many months in advance. It now can count on what the postal rates are going to be. Under the amendment of the Senator from Tennessee that stability, that predictability would be gone. The reason in 2006 that we rewrote the rate-setting system was that it had been an extremely litigious, time-consuming system. Both the mailers and the Postal Service hated the system that we had prior to 2006. Both agreed at the time that it was important to have stability and predictability in rates and to have a system that didn't involve this very expensive, litigious rate-setting system. So we went to the CPI link system so we could have stable, predictable, and transparent pricing increases. This amendment repeals the section of the current law on rate setting that mailers have repeatedly testified is the heart of the 2006 reforms and something they need if they are to continue to use the Postal Service. That is why the mailers, the largest customers of the Postal Service, are such strong supporters of the predictable system that we put in place in 2006. Let me turn to another issue. There is so much I could say on all of these, but I can see a lot of Members have come to the floor. The Senator's amendment would also eliminate the standards we put into the bill to protect overnight delivery within certain delivery areas. We have recently learned that the Postal Service's own preliminary analysis, submitted confidentially in secret to its regulators at the PRC, reveals that its service reduction plan to slow mail delivery and shut down postal plants will lead to more than a 9- percent decrease in first-class mail and a 7.7-percent reduction in all classes of mail. In this preliminary estimate the Postal Service said the first-year losses alone would be $5.2 billion; that the Postal Service would lose if we proceed with this plan. Now that those numbers have become public, the Postal Service is backpeddling and criticizing its own estimates. But those are the estimates that are in its own survey that was filed with the PRC. They don't surprise me because they are consistent with what I am hearing from major postal customers, and once those customers turn to other communications options and leave the mail system they will not be coming back, revenue will plummet, and the Postal Service will be sucked further into a death spiral. There are many other comments I could make about the amendment offered by the Senator from Tennessee. I think his amendment essentially constitutes a substitute to the bill that is before us in that it makes so many fundamental changes. I believe it would be devastating for the Postal Service; that it would cause large and small mailers to leave the Postal Service, setting off the death spiral from which the Postal Service might never recover.

Ms. COLLINS

Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I rise today to speak in favor of Senate Joint Resolution 36, which would reject the National Labor Relations Board's, NLRB, rule on representation procedures, the so-called ``ambush election'' rule. I am pleased to be an original co-sponsor of this important legislation, introduced by Senator Enzi with 44 cosponsors. On December 22, 2011, the NLRB finalized new regulations, which will become effective on April 30, 2012, significantly limiting the time for holding union representation elections. This change would result in employees making the critical decision about whether or not to form a union in as little as 10 days. Back in 1959, then-Senator John F. Kennedy explained that ``the 30- day waiting period [before a union election] is an additional safeguard against rushing employees into an election where they are unfamiliar with the issues . . . there should be at least a 30-day interval between the request for an election and the holding of the election'' to provide ``at least 30 days in which both parties can present their viewpoints.'' I agree with our former President and Senator. An expedited timeframe would limit the opportunity of employers to express their views, and leave employees with insufficient information to make an informed decision. According to the NLRB, in 2011 union representation elections were held on average within 38 days. That is already below the NLRB's stated target of 42 days. Therefore, this begs the question of why yet another regulation is even necessary. Businesses, our nation's job creators and the engine of any lasting economic growth, have been saying for some time that the lack of jobs is largely due to a climate of uncertainty, most notably the uncertainty and cost created by new federal regulations. This ambush election rule will particularly negatively affect small businesses. Small business owners often lack the resources and legal expertise to navigate and understand complex labor processes within such a short time frame. In our current economy, it is critical that we do everything possible to advance policies that promote U.S. economic growth and jobs. The Joint Resolution of Disapproval will not change current law. It simply will protect employers and employees by allowing them to conduct representation elections in the same manner that has been done for decades. The NLRB's goal should be to ensure fair elections and a level playing field for all.