Political Quotes

“I wish to discuss in more detail a key provision of the postal reform bill that is before us; that is, the provision that would refund to the Postal Service an $11 billion overpayment that the Postal Service has made to the Federal Employee Retirement System. This is the key provision of our bill because part of the money from that refund would be used to finance the buyouts and retirement incentives the Postmaster General has estimated would allow him to decrease the size of the workforce, in a compassionate way, by about 100,000 workers. The Postal Service has about 600,000 workers, just to give an idea of how many we are talking about. So it is about 18 percent. That would help the Postal Service right size. It is patterned on the practices many private corporations use when they find they need to downsize. They provide a little incentive for people to retire early or to retire. If they are eligible for retirement, it gives them a little incentive to take advantage of that. I am convinced this will work because more than 33 percent of postal employees are eligible for retirement right now. We use the standards that are in current laws. The retirement incentive cannot exceed $25,000. That is in current law for Federal agencies to use, and we would extend that so it is capped to postal employees.…”