Political Quotes

“I thank Senator McCaskill for her statement. What is interesting, this is one of those cases where maybe we appreciate something more than we would every day when we think it may disappear. It is true of institutions as well as people. There is no question that post offices, both in rural areas and small towns--and I will say for Connecticut, in neighborhoods and cities--that the post office has played an important community-building role. But beyond that, in a tough time economically, a lot of people depend on those post offices for their mail, for their prescription drugs, and for the business interactions they need. But here is the other side of it, which my friend from Missouri knows very well. We have 32,000 post offices in America. If we consider them to be retail outlets, which they are, that is more retail outlets than Walmart, Starbucks, and McDonald's combined. But we are talking about necessities. So we are very concerned that post offices not be closed in a precipitous manner if some have to be closed. So as my friend from Missouri knows, we put language in this bill that doesn't stop the process of review but forces the Postal Service to consider other options, such as consolidating post offices within a reasonable distance, reducing the number of operating hours, for instance, and permitting a contractor or a rural carrier to provide retail services in the communities served by the post office.…”