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…

Mr. President, I too support the amendment and urge its adoption. The PRESIDING OFFICER. If there is no further debate, the question is on the adoption of the amendment. The amendment (No. 2029), as modified, was agreed to.

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…

Mr. President, this amendment establishes what is essentially a privatization pilot program for the alternative delivery of mail outside of the universal service mandate of the Postal Service. I believe it would create chaos by allowing…

Mr. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to support a one-year extension of the Small Business Administration, SBA, 504 loan refinancing program that was originally authorized in the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010. This bill…

Madam President, I rise support of my amendment, which has been modified in consultation with the managers of the Postal Reform bill, S. 1789. I am very pleased that both Chairman Lieberman and Ranking Minority Member Collins have agreed…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…