NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF POSTAL SUPERVISORS
LEGISLATIVE
UPDATE - SEPTEMBER 30, 2006
Postal Reform Compromise Falters, As Congress Heads Home
Senate
and House lawmakers recessed early Saturday morning and departed the
nation's capital for the upcoming mid-term Congressional elections, as
a bipartisan eleventh-hour Senate push to reach a compromise postal
reform bill fell short in the closing hours. Dogged efforts by Senator
Susan Collins (R-ME), chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland
Security and Governmental Affairs, and Senator Tom Carper
(D-DE) to broker a postal measure achieved success on nearly all
fronts, but broke down because of union resistance on workers
compensation changes, with prospects of passage in the House of
Representatives additionally uncertain.
<>The
exhaustive last-ditch effort by Collins and Carper, two of the leading
Congressional champions of postal reform, to achieve a compromise
measure began last Wednesday when the Bush Administration proposed for
the first time to transfer the entirety of the CSRS escrow account to a
postal retiree health benefits lock box and to eliminate any USPS
financial obligation for past or future military retirement benefits of
postal employees. The White House proposal was welcomed by the Postal
Service, NAPS and postal employee organizations, mailers and others.
For months the Bush Administration had opposed any crediting of the
billions of dollars involved in the escrow and military retirement
accounts to the Postal Service. As a result, the White House proposal
kick-started renewed efforts to achieve passage of a postal bill in the
two days that remained before Congress began its scheduled recess.
By Friday afternoon, postal employee groups and mailers reached a
proposed resolution of the "exigency issue", involving the kinds of
circumstances in which the Postal Service could exceed the rate cap
controlling postal rate increases. And later Friday, UPS signaled its
willingness to refrain from opposing a Senate bill even if it continued
to regard single-piece parcels as a "market-dominant" product.
However, efforts
stalled late Friday night when the National
Association of Letter Carriers refused to endorse any bill that
included a workers
compensation provision, previously passed by the Senate, that required
a three-day waiting period before FECA benefits began. Most postal
observers considered the disputed change to be relatively minor,
especially in light of other workers compensation concessions already
reached and, most important, its ramifications upon final passage of
postal reform after 13 years of effort in the Congress.
What lays in store
now? The possibility still remains that a final deal could yet be
reached when
Congress returns for its lame duck session, six weeks from now,
beginning November 13, though the
outcome of the upcoming Congressional elections will play a huge role
in the direction of further talks.
Bruce Moyer
Legislative Counsel to the National Association of Postal Supervisors