Political Quotes

“Madam President, very briefly, first I want to thank the chair of the committee and my colleague from Maine, Senator Collins, for working and assisting me in modifying this amendment. I thought this amendment was important from the standpoint and based on our experience in Maine with the recent proposal by the Postal Service to close a distributional and processing facility. As my colleague Senator Collins will attest as well, we discovered that much of their methodology was indeed faulty in the savings that they had suggested would be achieved by closing this facility. There were many questions raised with those numbers and reports. As we know, before the U.S. Postal Service can make any determination for closing a facility, they have to prepare and publish an area processing study. Based on that study, I have recommended that we now have independent verification of the numbers and proposals by the U.S. Postal Service so that we can make sure those numbers are accurate and that we verify the methodology in addition to the savings. One of the examples I can give from this proposal is one they made for a facility in the State of Maine to eliminate two management positions, for a savings of $799,000. When we questioned the veracity of that number, they backtracked and said it was only $120,000. Incredulously, they have now submitted their final area processing study this year and returned to the higher figure of $800,000 for the two management positions.…”