Joseph Lieberman

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, a while back we skipped over the McCaskill-Merkley amendment. We were working on a modification. The modification is ready now. I ask unanimous consent that we proceed to the McCaskill-Merkley amendment No. 2031.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote and to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 and the waiver provisions of applicable budget resolutions, I move to waive all applicable sections of the act and budget resolutions for purposes of the pending amendment for reasons that we described in the debate we had here on the floor yesterday. The U.S. Postal Service says this bill will, in fact, save $19 billion a year. I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I ask unanimous consent that the vote on this motion to waive be placed at the end of the list of amendments that are in order to vote on now.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. If I may, if we are going to vote now--and Senator Collins and I spoke to this at great length yesterday. The CBO score my friend from Alabama cites is a real misreading of the effect of this legislation. It is a kind of form of accounting over the reality of budgeting. The bottom line is that the U.S. Postal Service itself says that if this bill--the substitute to S. 1789--is adopted--and it would be phased in over 3 years--the Postal Service will save $19 billion annually. To me, that is what this is all about--no deficit, a saving. I ask my colleagues to support the motion to waive the point of the order. I would yield to my ranking member.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, very briefly, I join my colleague in saying that if this point of order by our friend from Alabama is sustained and this bipartisan bill therefore is not able to be brought up, the effect will be that the Postal Service will continue to run ever-greater losses to a point where they, in fact, will have to turn to the Treasury, which they are not doing now, to bail them out. This is a responsible answer to a problem and a bipartisan one. I urge my colleagues to vote to support the motion to waive the Senator's point of order.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, very briefly, I thank Senator Brown from Massachusetts for his statement and his work on the bill. This point of order puts the whole bill in jeopardy. Right at the beginning of the debate and the vote, it forces Members to decide whether they want to deal with this crisis of the Postal Service. I think it tests Congress again--in this case the Senate. Are we going to face a real problem in one of the iconic areas of American public service, the Postal Service, which cannot continue to do business as it is now--and this bill will force it to change in ways that are significant but will still keep it alive--or are we going to turn away from the problem, which would be the effect of sustaining this point of order. It would also cut off the debate. We have 39 amendments pending. This bill may change as the debate goes on. The final vote on passage of the bill will require 60 votes. So don't cut it off now. Let's have this debate and prove to the American people that we can take on a problem and, on a bipartisan basis, fix it. I urge my colleagues to vote for the motion to waive the point of order.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote, and I move to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank my colleagues. We had kind of an existential vote at the beginning which we didn't expect. It is always good to survive terminal action, and now we can proceed. We have 39 amendments pending. I hope we can proceed expeditiously. I hope some of our colleagues will agree to voice votes. On several of these, Senators Collins, Carper, Scott Brown, and I agreed on and we are prepared to accept them. So I hope our colleagues will allow us to do that by consent. But now we can proceed with the first amendment. Amendment No. 2056, as Modified

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I support Senator Tester's amendment. It simply creates safeguards to ensure that the Postal Service, when it closes a post office, does so as the result of a process that is transparent and takes into account the unique needs of communities, particularly small towns and rural areas. This does not stop the decisionmaking process at the Postal Service to change the Postal Service. It makes it transparent and fair. If I may, at this time I ask unanimous consent that if a voice vote is requested and acceptable for any of the amendments relative to the postal reform bill, including this one, that the 60-vote affirmative vote requirement be waived for that amendment.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I want to note for the benefit of our colleagues that on the list of 39 amendments, the first amendment was Senator McCain's amendment No. 2001. He did not call it up, which is an expression of his intention not to go forward with it. I thank him for that, and I hope it sets a precedent that other of the sponsors of amendments will feel moved to follow.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I urge adoption of the amendment and ask for a voice vote.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote and to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I also support the amendment, and I thank Senator Coburn for introducing it. This is disclosure and limitation of spending on conferences. Unfortunately, the excessive and outrageous spending by GSA on the conference in Las Vegas brought the whole area of Federal spending on conferences into the public Klieg lights, and I reached a conclusion that we are spending too much. This amendment would require the posting online of all agency conference spending. It limits the amount that can be spent on conferences and limits the number of conferences agency employees can attend and it imposes a 20-percent across-the-board cut on agency budgets for this purpose. I hope the amendment passes. I hope the bill passes as amended. There are a couple parts of that that we have begun to work with Senator Coburn and his staff on which I think will make this a better amendment. But bottom line, this responds to a need, and I support it.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to oppose the amendment. This amendment would create a commission similar to the base closure commission to oversee Postal Service decisions regarding which post offices, processing plants, and district offices are to close or consolidate. In this bill we have constructed what I think is a clear and fair system for making exactly those decisions. The language in the bill is not status quo language. If this bill is enacted, there are post offices that will close or be consolidated as well as mail processing facilities that will close. That simply has to happen, but it will happen according to a system of due process that gives most heed to the fiscal crisis of the Postal Service. In other words, I think we have a congressional answer to this problem. We don't have to yield it to another BRAC commission. I urge opposition to the amendment.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to support the amendment. I thank Senator Wyden and those who worked with him on this amendment for, frankly, calling our attention to this important matter and working to ensure that our efforts to salvage the U.S. Postal Service-- to change it, to keep it alive--do not come at the expense of our critical efforts to ensure access to the voting booth by mail as well as no-excuse absentee programs that rely heavily on dependable mail service. I support the amendment. If there is no further debate, I urge that we adopt the amendment by voice vote.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, I appreciate the work that has been done on this amendment. I know there is a lot of interest on both sides of the aisle because of the concern about rural post offices. This establishes, again, some standards. It effectively asks the Postal Service before it considers closing a rural post office for 1 year after enactment of this legislation that it explore every other opportunity to continue to provide service other than closing the post office. The one clear authority given in the modified amendment is to close a rural post office when there is no significant community opposition, which is to say, when the Postal Service has convinced the people of the community that they have a good alternative to the current post office. So I think we have reasoned together. I hope this enables our colleagues who may have been thinking of more absolute prohibitions to closing post offices to step back from that. This is a rational, fair approach. I support the modification and the amendment. I urge that the amendment be adopted by voice vote.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I move to reconsider the vote and ask unanimous consent that the motion be laid upon the table. The motion to lay upon the table was agreed to.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, I rise to oppose the amendment of my friend from New Mexico. I know there are a lot of people who don't want to lose 6-day delivery. But the greater imperative is not to lose the Postal Service as we know it. The Postmaster asked for the immediate authority to go from 6 days of delivery to 5. In this bill we have given the Postmaster authority in many different areas to save money. We said, as a result, that we will not give him the authority to go from 6 days of delivery to 5 for 2 years, hoping that within the 2 years he can save enough money not to have to make this change. Frankly, I am skeptical that he can. We wanted to give him 6 days of delivery--that last opportunity. To pull this procedure out of the bill, with a lot of due process before the move can be made from 6 to 5 days, removes the credibility from the bill and will jeopardize its ultimate adoption. With a lot of respect and affection for my friend from New Mexico, I urge my colleagues to vote against this amendment.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, I thank my friend from Illinois. He has explained the amendment totally. It is a good amendment. I support its passage, and urge we adopt it by voice vote.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, I move to reconsider the vote, and to lay that motion on the table. The motion to lay on the table was agreed to. Amendment No. 2034

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I wish to join my friend from Maine in respectfully opposing Senator Akaka's amendment. This workers' compensation program has gotten out of control. Senator Collins has worked hard on this with others. Her reform proposal for the Postal Service struck the Obama administration as so sensible that they asked our committee to extend it to all the Federal Government employees. I urge opposition, respectfully, to the Akaka amendment.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to oppose this amendment. It deals with some issues that the committee and the bipartisan bill have dealt with in a fair and balanced way. It kind of breaks through that proposal we have made. It would permit the Postal Service to move to 5- day delivery service immediately. It would increase rates without a cap. It also removes some protections that are in the bill at this time. I think this amendment, if adopted, would lead to the kind of curtailments in postal operations that would actually not help the Postal Service but diminish revenues and put it more dramatically into deficits. With respect to my friend, the Senator from Tennessee, who sponsored it, I oppose this amendment.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, knowing we are scheduled to go out at 12:50, I ask unanimous consent to stay in session for no longer than 10 minutes more, so we will break at 1 p.m., for Senator Collins and I to respond to Senator McCain--hopefully, sooner than that.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair, particularly since the Chair will be occupied by the distinguished Senator from Montana between now and then. I wish to respond very briefly to the statement of my friend from Arizona, with a couple big points. The first is that Senator McCain has declared the Postal Service of the United States dead much too prematurely. He compares it to the Pony Express. Of course, electronic mail and other changes have occurred but, today, every day, the Postal Service delivers 563 million pieces of mail--every day. There are businesses and individuals all over our country who depend on the mail. The estimate is there are approximately 8 million jobs in our country, most of them, of course--almost all of them--in the private sector, that depend in one way or another on the functioning of the U.S. Postal Service. It is not fair and it is not realistic to speak as if the Postal Service is dead and gone and it is time to essentially bury it with the McCain substitute. I cannot resist saying that Senator Collins and I come not to bury the U.S. Postal Service; we come to change it but to keep it alive and well forever because it is that important to our country. Secondly, Senator McCain speaks as if the substitute legislation, S. 1789, that we are proposing--bipartisan legislation--does nothing; that it is a status quo piece of legislation; it is not even a bandaid on the problem. We all know, because we have talked about it incessantly since we went on this bill, that the Postal Service is in financial difficulty. Incidentally, I wish to say there is not a dime of taxpayer money in the Postal Service. Ever since the Postal Service reforms occurred, it has been totally supported by ratepayers, basically by people who buy the services of the Postal Service, with two small exceptions which are small--one to pay for overseas ballots for members of the military so they can vote and another special program to facilitate the use of the mail by blind Americans. But it has a problem: $13 billion lost over the last 2 years. This proposal of ours--Senator Collins and I, Senator Carper and Senator Scott Brown--is not a status quo proposal. It makes significant changes. There are going to be about 100,000 fewer people working for the Postal Service as a result of this bill being passed. There will be mail processing facilities that close. There will be post offices that will be closed and/or consolidated. There will be new sources of revenue for the Postal Service. The bottom line: The U.S. Postal Service itself estimates that our legislation, if enacted as it is now, as it is phased in over the next 3 to 4 years, by 2016, will save the Postal Service $19 billion a year. This isn't a bandaid. This is a real reform, a real transformation of the Postal Service to keep it alive-- $19 billion. Let me put it another way. This is a bipartisan proposal. We have worked on it very hard to keep it bipartisan. We think it can pass the Senate and it can ultimately be enacted. If Senator McCain's substitute were to pass the Senate, nobody thinks it is going to get enacted into law. It would not. Certainly, the President of the United States would not sign it, and that will mean nothing will be done. What will be the effect of that? The effect will be that the post office will go further and further into debt and deficit. Also, the Postmaster General will be faced with a choice of either enormous debts and deficits or taking steps that will make the situation worse--which our bill, through a reasonable process, is trying to avoid--which is a kind of shock therapy whose effect will be, as the McCain substitute would be, to actually drop the revenues of the post office and accelerate its downward spiral. I think the two numbers to think about--the ones that come from the Postal Service itself--are these: By 2016, if we do nothing, the Postal Service will run somewhere between a $20 billion and $21 billion annual deficit. If we pass this bill and it is enacted into law, that deficit will be down to around $1 billion--a little more--and heading toward balance in the years that follow. So I urge my colleagues to vote against the McCain substitute and the BRAC amendment. The BRAC-like Commission amendment I think is not necessary. It is not necessary for us in Congress to give up and give in. We have a good resolution to the problem. Incidentally, if we get this enacted, I think we will send a message to the American people that we can face a tough problem that exists in a public service, deal with it in a reasonable way, and ask people to sacrifice but keep a venerable and critically important American institution alive and well. I thank the Chair and I yield the floor for my distinguished ranking member.