Political Quotes

“I thank my friend from Virginia most importantly for focusing our attention--I know Senator Collins and Senator Akaka have also been involved in this--on this unacceptable situation, where Federal employees are retiring. Because of a lot of failures here, the failure to implement an effective--it is 2012-- electronic system for this purpose, this paper processing, meaning that people have to wait these very long times after they retire, while they are waiting, they are getting a significantly reduced benefit which causes real hardship. The Senator from Virginia is absolutely right. We mandate in this bill, the underlying bill, that the Postal Service accept the goal of 18 percent in reduction of workforce. The total number of career employees in the U.S. Postal Service is about 545,000, and 18 percent comes out to around 100,000, which is our goal for reduction. This has to happen if the Postal Service is going to get back in balance. Because as Senator Collins said earlier today, 80 percent of the operating budget of the Postal Service is personnel costs. Obviously, it is a labor-intensive operation. So we are going to have another 100,000 people. In fact, it keeps going. By 2017, we will have--from now, this year, we will have a total of 138,000 postal employees eligible to retire. The Postal Service is going to have to work to incentivize them to retire so the service overall can stay in balance.…”