Tom Carper

The bill that I have introduced and described earlier removes the legislative restrictions that prevent the Postal Service from exercising its authority to reduce delivery frequency.

The theme that pervades, permeates their proposal is actually a sharing of sacrifice that is being asked.

The ideal outcome, in my view, would be more not less access to postal retail outlets.

All right. Thank you. Talk to us a little bit about productivity gains and some gains that you have realized by virtue of negotiations with the labor unions which represent your employees.

Next year? End of the current fiscal year?

The POST Act would ensure that, on this issue, the Postal Service, working with its regulator and its customers, will make the critical decisions on Saturday delivery without political interference.

I am pleased to call our hearing to order and to be here with Senator Collins and, I suspect, a couple of our other colleagues as the morning goes on.

As we say in Delaware, carpe diem. Seize the day.

We approve of your legislation and that of Senator Collins to use the customer overpayment for postal pensions to fund retiree health benefits.

We appreciate the fact that is there and it is going to continue. We need that.

We urge you to reject this proposal as well.

But I would agree that diversification is essential if the Postal Service is going to survive into the future.

Good. Again, thanks for working with us and for all the good that you do.

I mentioned earlier the need for us as a country to move away from a culture of spendthrift in the Federal Government to a culture of thrift.

My bill addresses a flaw in postal labor law by requiring arbitrators to take the Postal Service's financial condition into account when rendering decisions during labor disputes.

It is my hope that with this hearing we will soon get down to the hard work of actually addressing those challenges and clearing the way to enable the Postal Service to emerge from the toughest time that it has faced since it was created…

I come out of this hearing encouraged rather than discouraged.

Both the Obama administration and a bipartisan majority of the House of Representatives that has cosponsored House Resolution 173 oppose eliminating Saturday delivery.

I do not want us to be sitting here 8 months from now, 9 months from now, 10 months from now trying to figure out what we are going to do.

I am not an advocate of eliminating Saturday delivery.

I propose in my legislation that the Postal Service be freed to better capitalize on the value of this network by experimenting with products and experimenting with services not directly related to the mail.

The Postal Service has done an admirable job in cutting costs and streamlining operations and reducing its workforce through attrition.

Congress has an important role to play and needs to play that role. So I would encourage you to have as much oversight on these issues as possible.

I think partnerships would be good to be able to address those problems.

I think that more now than ever we need to have more reliable data to manage the cost of the government and to be able to assess programs and policies.