Political Quotes

“Mr. President, the bill before us would make some important changes to existing law. There is little doubt that change is necessary; the Postal Service faces an extraordinary financial challenge, and it must make changes to take into account a new reality in which physical mail has in many cases been replaced by electronic communication. But in making these necessary reforms, we must ensure that all the American people can continue to rely on the United States Postal Service to provide universal service, as it has since our Nation's founding. And we must ensure that in making changes, any reduction in facilities and personnel yields real cost savings to the Postal Service that outweigh the loss in service. One of the things we can do to assure that is to require that there be a real, objective way to test and challenge Postal Service proposals to close facilities. In an effort to meet those goals, I have joined with Senators Tester and Franken and others to propose an amendment that would make some important changes to the substitute amendment before us. Here are some of the provisions of our amendment. Under current law, any interested party can appeal a proposed closure of a community's main post office to the PRC, the Postal Regulatory Commission. The substitute before us extends that opportunity for appeal to branches of a post office. The substitute does not, however, extend that same appeal right to postal processing facilities.…”