In his incendiary tweets last week, Chairman Darrell Issa laid out a marker on postal reform. He will not step back from championing H.R. 2309, the Postal Reform Act of 2011, which faces some challenges in the House and no future in the Senate. Why is he being stubborn?
Chairman Issa knows that his ability to influence the future of postal reform requires that he ensure that he can hold a majority of the Republican caucus behind his approach. From the beginning, he and Congressman Dennis Ross have used language supporting their bills that hit the hot-button Republican talking points. In particular, these talking points include opposition to:
- government spending,
- expansion of government entities into areas that could be provided by the private sector;
- bailouts of institutions as part of restructuring, and
- collective bargaining by public employees and the contracts that result from collective bargaining.
Chairman Issa has a problem, though, with his approach. While Chairman Issa’s approach fits what the Republican Caucus may want in principle, in reality, the changes required would hit the parts of the United States represented by Republicans pretty hard. Republican members who face competitive races in 2012 look at changes in service standards, closures of plants, elimination of door-t0-door delivery and closure of post offices as threats to their reelection. These changes have the most visible impact as the closing of a rural post office reflects the final act in a long term decline of commercial activity in rural communities that have been losing population for decades.
The importance of these objections among Republicans is critical, as no legislation makes it through the House of Representatives without support of the majority of House Republicans. As no Democrat will likely support this bill, Chairman Issa needs the majority in the House needed for passage to come exclusively from the Republican caucus. This limits potential defections to only 24 Republican members. With most rural areas having Republican representatives, making modification to HR 2309 will be required to ensure passage.
Fortunately for Chairman Issa, the Congressional Budget Office Report on HR 2309 gives Chairman Issa significant freedom to modify his bill to reduce the impact on rural areas without causing a problem with budget neutrality. So amendments to freeze or restrict closures of rural post offices and prohibit or limit reduction of service from 6-day delivery can pass while still allowing Chairman Issa and others to claim that the bill reduces the Federal budget.
One of the first amendments that will likely be added will include language similar to what is contained in H.R. 3744, The Rural Service Preservation Act, introduced by Representative Robert Alderholt (R-AL). This amendment makes requires that for the next five (5) years the Postal Service:
- maintain service to rural areas as they were upon passage; (This means that if the Postal Service went to 5-day delivery in urban areas, it could not make the same change in rural areas.)
- limit rural post office closings to no more than 10% of all post office closings; and
- limit buyouts to employees at rural post offices to no more than 10% of all buyouts
These changes are likely sufficient to ensure support by a sufficient number of Republicans in the House to ensure passage of H.R. 2309 and set up two possible legislative paths. The first involves a conference committee hammering out a bill that can pass both houses of Congress, without requiring single-party support in either passage or gridlock and brinkmanship similar to what has happened previously with budget proposals and the bill to raise the debt ceiling. Given the rhetoric Chairman Darrell Issa and Representative Dennis Ross have used recently, it would appear that the better bet would be on the latter path.
For more information on recent tweets by Chairman Darrell Issa and Congressman Dennis Ross see:
The Political Impact of Tweets from Representatives Issa and Ross
Ross Says Firing PMG May Have To Be First Step
