Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise today to speak in favor of Senate Joint Resolution 36, which would reject the National Labor Relations Board's, NLRB, rule on representation procedures, the so-called ``ambush election'' rule. I am pleased to be an original co-sponsor of this important legislation, introduced by Senator Enzi with 44 cosponsors.

On December 22, 2011, the NLRB finalized new regulations, which will become effective on April 30, 2012, significantly limiting the time for holding union representation elections. This change would result in employees making the critical decision about whether or not to form a union in as little as 10 days.

Back in 1959, then-Senator John F. Kennedy explained that ``the 30- day waiting period [before a union election] is an additional safeguard against rushing employees into an election where they are unfamiliar with the issues . . . there should be at least a 30-day interval between the request for an election and the holding of the election'' to provide ``at least 30 days in which both parties can present their viewpoints.'' I agree with our former President and Senator. An expedited timeframe would limit the opportunity of employers to express their views, and leave employees with insufficient information to make an informed decision.

According to the NLRB, in 2011 union representation elections were held on average within 38 days. That is already below the NLRB's stated target of 42 days. Therefore, this begs the question of why yet another regulation is even necessary.

Businesses, our nation's job creators and the engine of any lasting economic growth, have been saying for some time that the lack of jobs is largely due to a climate of uncertainty, most notably the uncertainty and cost created by new federal regulations.

This ambush election rule will particularly negatively affect small businesses. Small business owners often lack the resources and legal expertise to navigate and understand complex labor processes within such a short time frame. In our current economy, it is critical that we do everything possible to advance policies that promote U.S. economic growth and jobs.

The Joint Resolution of Disapproval will not change current law. It simply will protect employers and employees by allowing them to conduct representation elections in the same manner that has been done for decades.

The NLRB's goal should be to ensure fair elections and a level playing field for all.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, it pains me greatly to disagree with my friend and colleague from Tennessee, with whom I have a great friendship and great respect, but what he is essentially offering comes pretty close to a complete substitute for the provisions in our bill, and I wish to go through the provisions to make sure our colleagues understand fully what the choices are that are presented by Senator Corker's amendment.

First, let me say I do strongly oppose his amendment because of the impact I believe it would have on postal customers, whether they are in rural America, whether they are a big mailer, a small mailer, a residence or a business, and what the impact ultimately will be on postal revenue. Let us first discuss the issue of 6-day delivery.

There are a lot of different views on this issue. Senator Corker has presented one, as has Senator McCain, of moving immediately to 5-day delivery. On the other hand, there are Members who have filed amendments who want to prevent the Postal Service from ever moving to 5-day delivery. Here is what is in our bill.

Our bill recognizes the Postal Service should, if possible, avoid deep cuts in its service. Certainly, eliminating 1 day a week of delivery is a deep cut in the service it is providing. It recognizes, however, that if the Postal Service cannot wring out the excessive cost that is in its current system, it may have no choice but to eliminate Saturday delivery in order to become solvent.

What we do is allow a 2-year period during which time the Postal Service would implement the many cost-saving provisions in our bill, including a workforce reduction of 18 percent--which is about 100,000 employees--through compassionate means, such as buyouts and retirement incentives, and then have the GAO and the PRC--the Postal Regulatory Commission--certify that despite undertaking all these cost-saving moves, it is not possible for the Postal Service to return to solvency without this deep service cut. But to move immediately to eliminating Saturday delivery would come at a real cost and it may not be necessary. It may not be necessary at all.

I would also point out the experts in this area are the members of the Postal Regulatory Commission. The experts are not at CBO. The experts are the regulators of the Postal Service--the PRC. When the PRC examined the issue of eliminating Saturday delivery, here is what it found. First of all, it found the potential savings were far less than the Postal Service estimated. In fact, they were half as much as the Postal Service estimated.

Second, they found that eliminating Saturday delivery put rural America, in particular, at a disadvantage because rural America often does not have access to broadband, to Internet services, and to alternative delivery systems. So the PRC, which looked at this issue very carefully and issued a report, found the savings were less by half and the consequences were far more severe for rural America.

Saturday delivery also gives the Postal Service itself a competitive advantage over nonpostal alternatives. If we are here trying to save the Postal Service, why would we jeopardize an asset the Postal Service has that its competitors do not? That is why we came up with this carefully crafted compromise on this issue.

I believe cutting Saturday delivery should be the last resort, not the first

option, because it will inevitably drive away customers. That is one reason the American Newspaper Association is so opposed to doing away with Saturday delivery. It is one reason many of the mail order pharmaceutical companies are so opposed, because many seniors depend on receiving their vital medications through the mail.

Again, we have said if there are no other alternatives, this measure could proceed. But I can't imagine any large business operating this way--cutting service first. My colleagues often talk about how important it is to let the Postal Service act like a ``real business.'' But this is the last thing a real business would do. Real businesses know their most valuable asset is their customer base. Businesses do literally everything else before slashing service and raising prices or anything else that might alienate or drive away their remaining customers, and they do not do this out of the goodness of their hearts but because they understand what drives their bottom line.

The fact is, if more customers leave the Postal Service, the revenue will plummet. Again, reducing service--eliminating Saturday delivery-- should be the last resort, not the first option. That is exactly what our bill does.

The Senator's amendment would also repeal the CPI link to postal rates. I am at a loss as to why the Senator would propose that. Eliminating that protection, that orderly system, would be devastating for many mailers. Again, mailers need predictable, steady, stable rates.

Think of a catalog company that prints its catalogs so many months in advance. It now can count on what the postal rates are going to be. Under the amendment of the Senator from Tennessee that stability, that predictability would be gone.

The reason in 2006 that we rewrote the rate-setting system was that it had been an extremely litigious, time-consuming system. Both the mailers and the Postal Service hated the system that we had prior to 2006. Both agreed at the time that it was important to have stability and predictability in rates and to have a system that didn't involve this very expensive, litigious rate-setting system. So we went to the CPI link system so we could have stable, predictable, and transparent pricing increases.

This amendment repeals the section of the current law on rate setting that mailers have repeatedly testified is the heart of the 2006 reforms and something they need if they are to continue to use the Postal Service. That is why the mailers, the largest customers of the Postal Service, are such strong supporters of the predictable system that we put in place in 2006.

Let me turn to another issue. There is so much I could say on all of these, but I can see a lot of Members have come to the floor.

The Senator's amendment would also eliminate the standards we put into the bill to protect overnight delivery within certain delivery areas. We have recently learned that the Postal Service's own preliminary analysis, submitted confidentially in secret to its regulators at the PRC, reveals that its service reduction plan to slow mail delivery and shut down postal plants will lead to more than a 9- percent decrease in first-class mail and a 7.7-percent reduction in all classes of mail.

In this preliminary estimate the Postal Service said the first-year losses alone would be $5.2 billion; that the Postal Service would lose if we proceed with this plan. Now that those numbers have become public, the Postal Service is backpeddling and criticizing its own estimates. But those are the estimates that are in its own survey that was filed with the PRC.

They don't surprise me because they are consistent with what I am hearing from major postal customers, and once those customers turn to other communications options and leave the mail system they will not be coming back, revenue will plummet, and the Postal Service will be sucked further into a death spiral.

There are many other comments I could make about the amendment offered by the Senator from Tennessee. I think his amendment essentially constitutes a substitute to the bill that is before us in that it makes so many fundamental changes. I believe it would be devastating for the Postal Service; that it would cause large and small mailers to leave the Postal Service, setting off the death spiral from which the Postal Service might never recover.

Mr. President, I have the greatest respect for the Senator from Hawaii. I know he cares deeply about this issue. But it is simply time for us to reform the Federal workers' compensation program for postal workers and for other Federal workers. For this reason, I oppose his amendment because it does not begin to solve the problems that have been repeatedly documented in the program by the inspectors general at the Postal Service, at the Department of Labor, by GAO, and by the Obama administration, which has called for many of the reforms we have incorporated into this bill. Senator Akaka's amendment takes on only very minor reforms which are already included in the bill. It does not even attempt to constrain the rapidly growing costs of the program, and it truly does nothing to effectively combat the fraud in the program.

Let me start with some background to show the growing, the escalating cost of the Federal workers' compensation system. From 1997 to 2009, the program's costs grew by an astonishing $1 billion, as this chart shows. That was a 52-percent increase in program expenditures. It is one of the reasons why President Obama's administration has submitted changes to this program over and over. Our bill, according to the CBO, would reduce the program's outlays for workers' comp by $1.2 billion over the next 10 years.

I note the Obama administration supports across-the-board reforms, just as we have put in our bill. It makes no sense to have one system for postal workers and one system for Federal employees when they all participate in the same program now. The Postal Service, however, makes up more than 40 percent of all workers' comp cases for the Government, and the number of postal employees on the long-term rolls has increased by 62 percent since 2009. Paying more than $1 billion a year in workers' comp payments, the Postal Service is the largest program participant, providing over one-third of the program's budget. These changes are supported by the leaders at the Postal Service. The amendment would block desperately needed reforms to a program that has not been updated in over 35 years.

Let me talk a little bit about the structure of benefits in the program and why there is a problem. Under the current program, a worker who has dependents and is out on workers' comp receives a payment at the rate of 75 percent of his preinjury salary, and these benefits are tax free. Currently, more than 70 percent of beneficiaries are receiving compensation at that level.

In addition to that, it is important to understand that 75-percent tax-free benefit rate is higher than that paid by any comparable State workers' compensation system and, given our current Tax Code, 75 percent of salary tax free is equivalent, for most people, to a full salary after taxes.

We do want to make sure we have a workers' comp program that takes care of our injured workers that is compassionate, that helps them recover and return to work. But the current program of the Federal Government does not accomplish those roles.

First of all, it does not encourage injured workers to get the help they need to recover and to return to work, as these statistics will demonstrate. Right now, the program, across the board, Federal and postal workers, has 10,000 beneficiaries age 70 or older, 2,000 of whom are postal employees. They are receiving higher payments on workers' comp than they would under the standard retirement program. That is almost one-quarter of all beneficiaries in the program who are over age 70. Of the beneficiaries, 430 of them are over age 90, and 6 of the workers' comp beneficiaries are age 100 or older. These employees are not going back to work. If they were still working, it would be a miracle. They would be retired. It is not fair to postal and Federal employees who work their entire lives, retire at age 60 or 65, and receive a retirement benefit that is 26 percent lower than the median benefit received by workers' compensation recipients. That is unfair. That means people who remain on workers' comp make more money than if they had continued working and much more than they would make in the retirement systems for Federal and postal workers.

I wish to make sure that as we reform the system, we are fair. One of the major reforms is to move people at age 65 from workers' comp to the normal retirement system, but we have exempted from these reforms those who are least able to prepare for it, those who are totally disabled and unable to return to work, and those who are age 65 and over. I think that is a very fair approach.

Another protection we have included for those current claimants who would

be affected by the reforms in the bill is a 3-year waiting period. If a claimant is not already grandfathered and therefore is not disabled and unable to return to work, then that individual would experience no reduction in benefits for 3 years, regardless of that individual's age. Again, the reforms we have included in our bill closely track the reforms proposed by President Obama's administration.

Finally, let me just say this program has proven to be highly vulnerable to fraud. GAO reported as recently as November that the vulnerabilities in the program increase the risk of claimants receiving benefits they are not entitled to. There are many reasons for that. I will go into that further at another time. But the Department of Labor inspector general reported that the removal of a single fraudulent claim saves, on average, between $300,000 and $500,000. What is more, these vulnerabilities are not new and they are not rare. When the IG looked at 10,000 claimant files one decade ago, there were irregularities in almost 75 percent of them, and it resulted in benefits being reduced or ended for more than 50 claimants.

This is a troubled program. It needs to be reformed. It needs to be made more fair. It needs to be more fair to individual workers. There needs to be more of a focus on return to work, and it needs to be more fair to workers who spend their entire careers working for the Postal Service or the Federal Government and then retire and receive a far lower benefit than an elderly individual who remains on workers' comp.

I urge the defeat of the amendment.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I want to echo the thanks to everyone who was involved in formulating this very extensive unanimous consent agreement. We have been working extremely hard the last couple of days to make sure we were being fair to all Members on a bill on which there are diverse opinions, on an issue that is so important and that is how do we save an essential American institution, the U.S. Postal Service.

I too want to thank our two leaders, Senator Reid and Senator McConnell, and my dear friend and chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Senator Lieberman, as well as our staffs and our floor staff who have put in so many hours.

I want to reiterate that Senator Lieberman and I will be available to negotiate--our staffs will as well--and to debate these issues. We will be available over the weekend and tomorrow, and then on Monday to begin the debate on the amendments. But, again, I want to thank everyone involved. I think this is how the Senate should operate. It took a lot of work to get here, but no one gave up. Everyone kept working away.

I believe we have come up with a very fair agreement to allow us to proceed on a bill of great significance. I want to thank everyone involved.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today, I rise to introduce the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, IPAWS, Modernization Act of 2012. I am pleased to be joined by Senators Lieberman, Scott Brown, Akaka, and Carper in introducing this bill. It will ensure that more people receive life-saving information in more parts of America, more of the time, through current and future technologies.

Effective communication with the public before, during, and after a disaster is vitally important and can literally mean the difference between life and death. Since the 1950's, the U.S. Government has had a system in place to ensure that citizens can be warned in times of crisis. This system can also be used for local authorities to warn citizens of impending severe weather or other hazards to public safety.

Most people know the Emergency Alert System, EAS, as the crawling text on their television screens, and although this system remains the backbone of our national alerting capability, times have changed, and so must the way we communicate with the public during times of crisis.

This bill will strengthen the IPAWS system and ensure that as many Americans as possible receive these alerts in a timely and useful manner. The bill ensures that the integrated public alert and warning system incorporates multiple communications technologies, including new technologies such as smart phones and social networking sites;

The bill is designed to adapt to and incorporate future technologies;

The bill is designed to provide alerts to the largest portion of the affected population, including remote areas;

The bill promotes local and regional public and private partnerships; and

The bill provides redundant alert mechanisms in order to reach the greatest number of people possible.

The bill also requires the FEMA Administrator to ensure the inclusion of those with disabilities in the alert and warning system; ensure that the system is included in future exercises conducted through DHS's National Exercise Program, including the annual National Level Exercises; and requires FEMA to coordinate with DHS's National Terrorism Advisory System office. The bill provides for periodic nationwide tests of the system, and establishes a training program to instruct federal, state, tribal and local government officials in system use.

The bill also establishes an IPAWS Advisory Committee composed of federal, State and local representatives, as well as members who represent relevant industry groups and a consumer/privacy advocate. The committee would meet at least once a year and issue a yearly report on improvements to IPAWS. The bill also states that the administrator may not transmit a message from the President that does not relate to a natural disaster, act of terrorism, other man-made disaster, or other hazard to public safety.

This bill has been endorsed by the National Emergency Management Association, NEMA, the National Association of Broadcasters, NAB, the National Federation of the Blind, and the Hearing Loss Association of America. Additionally, we have received a letter of support from the CEOs of all 50 State broadcast trade associations.

I look forward to working with all of my colleagues to pass this bill and have it signed into law.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that letters of support be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, today, I rise to introduce the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System, IPAWS, Modernization Act of 2012. I am pleased to be joined by Senators Lieberman, Scott Brown, Akaka, and Carper in introducing this bill. It will ensure that more people receive life-saving information in more parts of America, more of the time, through current and future technologies.

Effective communication with the public before, during, and after a disaster is vitally important and can literally mean the difference between life and death. Since the 1950's, the U.S. Government has had a system in place to ensure that citizens can be warned in times of crisis. This system can also be used for local authorities to warn citizens of impending severe weather or other hazards to public safety.

Most people know the Emergency Alert System, EAS, as the crawling text on their television screens, and although this system remains the backbone of our national alerting capability, times have changed, and so must the way we communicate with the public during times of crisis.

This bill will strengthen the IPAWS system and ensure that as many Americans as possible receive these alerts in a timely and useful manner. The bill ensures that the integrated public alert and warning system incorporates multiple communications technologies, including new technologies such as smart phones and social networking sites;

The bill is designed to adapt to and incorporate future technologies;

The bill is designed to provide alerts to the largest portion of the affected population, including remote areas;

The bill promotes local and regional public and private partnerships; and

The bill provides redundant alert mechanisms in order to reach the greatest number of people possible.

The bill also requires the FEMA Administrator to ensure the inclusion of those with disabilities in the alert and warning system; ensure that the system is included in future exercises conducted through DHS's National Exercise Program, including the annual National Level Exercises; and requires FEMA to coordinate with DHS's National Terrorism Advisory System office. The bill provides for periodic nationwide tests of the system, and establishes a training program to instruct federal, state, tribal and local government officials in system use.

The bill also establishes an IPAWS Advisory Committee composed of federal, State and local representatives, as well as members who represent relevant industry groups and a consumer/privacy advocate. The committee would meet at least once a year and issue a yearly report on improvements to IPAWS. The bill also states that the administrator may not transmit a message from the President that does not relate to a natural disaster, act of terrorism, other man-made disaster, or other hazard to public safety.

This bill has been endorsed by the National Emergency Management Association, NEMA, the National Association of Broadcasters, NAB, the National Federation of the Blind, and the Hearing Loss Association of America. Additionally, we have received a letter of support from the CEOs of all 50 State broadcast trade associations.

I look forward to working with all of my colleagues to pass this bill and have it signed into law.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that letters of support be printed in the Record.

Madam President, before my friend and colleague from Maryland leaves the floor, I wish to thank her for her passionate advocacy on behalf of her constituents. I have a similar problem in my home State of Maine, where a processing center has been targeted for closure that would have an extraordinarily detrimental impact on mail delivery for two-thirds of the State of Maine. It makes no sense whatsoever. It would do away with overnight delivery, as the Senator has indicated.

I would encourage her to continue to work with us and also to look at the specific provisions we have put into the substitute that reflect the input we have had from her and many other concerned Senators. One of those standards deals with the overnight delivery and the need to maintain that standard of service.

This is an advantage the Postal Service has, and it helps it keep customers. In my view, to do away with overnight delivery would be foolhardy, and it would actually cause more mailers to leave the Postal Service, which would produce a further decline in volume and, thus, revenues would plummet still further.

I understand a lot of the concerns the Senator from Maryland has raised. I do think we have taken care of some of her concerns in the new substitute we have proposed on a bipartisan basis. But we look forward to continuing to work with her to address her concerns.

Madam President, 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.

We also would allow the Postal Service to give 1 year of retirement credit for someone who is 1 year short of the necessary number of years under the old Civil Service Retirement System, 2 years under the newer FERS system.

But yesterday I heard one of our colleagues describe this refund of $11 billion as being an overpayment that will come from taxpayer pockets. That is not an accurate statement. I realize this bill is very complex. So I wish to provide to my colleagues some additional information. They do not have to just take my word for it; they can take the word of the inspector general of the U.S. Postal Service.

The FERS system does have tax dollars in it from Federal agencies that are paying in for their employees and, of course, the employees also contribute to the system. But when it comes to the Postal Service, the money is not coming from taxpayers. The contributions are not coming from taxpayers. They are coming from postal employees themselves, and they are coming from the Postal Service, which is using its revenue from postage and other services and, thus, it is the ratepayers' money.

The inspector general makes this very clear in his letter. I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in the Record.

Madam President, first of all, the inspector general verifies the amount of the overpayments. His letter to Senator Lieberman, Senator Carper, Senator Scott Brown, and myself, dated February 2, 2012, says:

The postal surplus for the Federal Employees Retirement

System (FERS) has been projected to be $11.4 billion for

fiscal year 2011. The Office of Personnel Management made

this projection as of September 30 of 2011.

In addition, OPM has projected the postal surplus of the

Civil Service Retirement System to be $1.7 billion for fiscal

year 2011.

We are not trying to deal with that; we are only dealing with the FERS surplus. Here is the key paragraph.

The source of the FERS funding comes from two streams of

revenue: (1) the U.S. Postal Service contributes 11.9 percent

of employee salaries to the fund and (2) the employees

contribute 0.8 percent. The Postal Service contribution comes

from revenue paid for postage, and this money comes from the

ratepayers. The employee contribution, as with all Federal

employees, is made in exchange for a defined benefit.

This could not be more clear. This is not taxpayers' money. No matter how many times some of our colleagues may say this is a taxpayer bailout or this is taxpayers' money, it is not true. It is not an accurate understanding of how the system works. I am going to circulate this letter widely, and I hope my colleagues will take the time to read it.

I can understand the confusion, because if it were a Federal agency, a regular Federal agency, it would be taxpayer money. But it is the Postal Service and it is not taxpayer money, and that is important.

The other important point I wish to make is that this is a real overpayment. It has been verified by an independent board of actuaries. This is not something the Postal Service came up with or that our committee came up with. This has been verified by the OPM Board of Actuaries, an independent body comprised of private sector actuaries that advises the Office of Actuaries within OPM and reviews annual reports.

So it is not even OPM's actuaries. It is an independent board of private sector actuaries that has verified that this is, in fact, an overpayment and it is $11.4 billion.

I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record a letter from the Office of Personnel Management which explains the independent boards.

Madam President, the Government Accountability Office has also looked at this issue and found that OPM's Actuary did assess that there was an overpayment--what GAO calls a surplus.

There is one paragraph in the GAO letter that I particularly want to bring to my colleagues' attention because it is a call for action. The Comptroller General says:

We have also reported that Congress and USPS urgently need

to reach agreement on a comprehensive reform package to

address the Postal Service's financial problems. Congress

could consider a one-time return of some, or all, of the FERS

surplus as part of a broader package tied to specific actions

on the part of USPS to help it address its financial

problems. These actions could include prefunding its retiree

health benefit obligation, reducing its $13 billion debt, or

developing incentives to reduce its workforce.

Madam President, that is what our bill does. We are following the advice of the GAO to do this one-time refund of the overpayment and dedicate it specifically to the incentives to reduce its workforce and to reducing the debt the Postal Service owes to the Treasury. We also deal with the prefunding of the retiree health benefit issue in our bill as well.

My point is that there is agreement that this is not taxpayers' money. There is agreement that this is a true overpayment. And we have GAO suggesting that we do exactly what this bill does, which is the one-time refund of the overpayment, tied to reform to address the USPS's financial crisis and specifically mandating that the money be used to develop incentives to reduce the size of the workforce and pay down its debt.

I wanted to take this time today to explain this issue because I am very concerned that there are Members who are operating on the basis of a complete misconception that somehow this is a taxpayer bailout or that it is taxpayer funds that are being used to repay this overpayment. That is not accurate.

This bill is very complicated, and I hope we can stick to the facts as we debate it. People may have different views on the way forward or the path forward, but I hope we can keep this free from mischaracterizations about the bill. I understand how it is going to happen because it is a complex matter. That is why we have spent, on our committee, so many months carefully studying this issue and getting help and expertise from GAO, OPM, and outside parties to make sure--and from the IG--we fully understand the provisions of the bill.

Mr. President, I, too, want to comment on this issue of the prefunding for the health care benefits of future retirees. I think it is important to note that when the 2006 law was written, the Postal Service supported this provision because it recognized that it had a huge unfunded liability for future health benefits and it knew it was important to start putting money aside to ensure that at the time those retirees needed to claim those benefits, the money would be there and the promises would be kept.

It was also important because we wanted to avoid the possibility of a system going into default and taxpayers having to step in to keep the promises the Postal Service has made.

The fact is the current liability is about $46 billion for those retiree health benefits, the future retiree health benefits. That liability is a very real one. It is not going away. Nevertheless, we have taken steps in our bill, as Senator Lieberman has described, to ease the funding by setting up a 40-year amortization schedule and by changing the discount rate. So those two provisions should save the Postal Service approximately $2 billion--the exact number would be determined--each year, and that is obviously very welcome.

But I do want to address what I believe is another misconception, and that is that the funding for future retirees' health benefits is somehow the cause of the Postal Service's financial crisis. It is not. The fact is that the Postal Service has not made its payment of $5.5 billion that was due to this fund in either of the last 2 fiscal years. Yet the Postal Service lost billions in both of those years, despite not paying the $5.5 billion that was due to this fund. In total, the Postal Service has made only $6.9 billion of the $16.4 billion that was required in prefunding payments for the past 3 years, but has posted losses, total losses for those 3 years of $26.9 billion. So it is certainly true that we can and should ease the funding requirement in light of the problems of the Postal Service. It is also true that we don't need to fund to 100 percent, which the 2006 law requires. If my memory serves me correctly, I believe we have lowered the funding level to 80 percent. Those provisions all have a substantial impact on lowering the annual payment.

I have two final points I want to reiterate. The prefunding requirement is not the cause of the Postal Service's financial crisis; and second, that $46 billion liability is very real and it is not going away. Indeed, stretching out the amortization schedule, which I believe we should do, is going to actually cause that liability to increase because we will be paying it over a longer period of time.

Nevertheless, I think the changes that have been made in the funding for future retirees' health benefits make sense. I think they are financially responsible and they will provide some needed relief to the Postal Service without exposing taxpayers to the possibility of having to pick up the tab and without breaking the promise that has been made to postal employees.

Thank you, Mr. President.

Mr. President, I am very pleased to join with the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee in urging all of our colleagues to cast a vote for cloture on the motion to proceed to this vitally important bill.

There are many different views on how to save the Postal Service, but there can be no doubt that the Postal

Service is in crisis. We are at a critical juncture. Without passing legislation, the Postal Service will simply be unable to meet its payroll, perhaps as soon as this fall. We simply cannot allow that to happen.

The Postal Service is vital to our economy. It is the linchpin of a trillion-dollar mailing industry that employs nearly 8.7 million Americans in fields as diverse as printing, catalog companies, paper manufacturing, and newspaper and magazine publishers. These industries and the jobs they sustain are in jeopardy. If we fail to act, we will deliver a crippling blow to the Postal Service.

As Senator Lieberman has indicated, the Postal Service is in crisis. It has lost more than $13 billion just in the past 2 years. First-class mail volume has dropped by 23 percent over the past 5 years and 12 percent over the past 2 years. The Postal Service has a debt to the U.S. Treasury of $13 billion and will max out its credit limit of $15 billion this year.

We have to address this crisis. It would be irresponsible for Members to simply vote no on the motion to proceed if they have other ideas on how to address this crisis. I have urged a full and open and fair amendment process so that Members can bring forth their alternative plans for saving the Postal Service. We simply cannot allow the Postal Service to fail. The stakes are too high for our economy and for Americans across this country.

Finally, I would remind my colleagues that the Postal Service's roots go back to our Constitution. This is an organization that is vital to our heritage and to our future. I urge a ``yes'' vote for the motion to proceed.

I yield back the remainder of the time on our side.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to speak for up to 30 minutes.

Today, the Senate begins debate on reform legislation to save an American institution--the U.S. Postal Service. Our Founding Fathers recognized the importance of having a postal service. Article I, section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the power to establish post offices. The Postal Service is also required by law to provide the entire population of the United States with adequate and efficient postal services at a fair and reasonable rate. This is called the universal mandate, and it ensures that the Postal Service cannot leave behind rural States and small towns.

The Postal Service, which has delivered news to generation after generation of Americans, is at great risk of not being able to make its payroll by this fall, according to the Postmaster General himself. My point is that this crisis is very real. The Postal Service is in debt to the U.S. Treasury by $13 billion. By the end of the year, it is likely to reach its statutory debt limit of $15 billion. Driving this crisis are many factors, not the least of which is that the volume of its first-class mail has fallen by 26 percent since 2006 and continues to decline as this chart shows. Reflecting that sharp drop in volume, revenue has plummeted from $72.8 billion in 2006 to $65.7 billion in 2011.

The Postal Service is part of our culture and economic fabric. Its failure would deliver a crushing blow to our economy at a time when the economy is already fragile, and it would be particularly harmful to people living and working in rural America. That means we must pass a bill. Doing nothing is only an option if we are willing to let the Postal Service fail. That is the choice we face. Failure would imperil a vital component of our economy, for the Postal Service is the linchpin of a $1 trillion mailing and mail-related industry that employs nearly 8.7 million Americans in fields as diverse as direct mail, printing, catalog companies, magazine and newspaper publishers, and paper manufacturing, to name just a few. In my State, nearly 38,000 Mainers work in jobs related to the mailing industry, including thousands at our pulp and paper mills, such as the one in Bucksport, ME, which manufactures the paper for Time magazine.

The rapid transition from traditional mail to electronic communication has come at an enormous cost to the Postal Service. The loss of so much mail, coupled with unsustainably high labor costs and exacerbated by the worst recession in decades, has left the Postal Service on the brink of collapse. Despite these headwinds, the Postmaster General is inexplicably forging ahead with plans to abandon current mail service standards in favor of reduced access, slower delivery times, and higher prices. His plans, I fear, will force many of the Postal Service's best customers to pursue delivery alternatives. I cannot think of another major business in serious financial trouble that would risk alienating its remaining customers by slashing service and raising prices. That is a recipe for disaster.

We recently learned the Postal Service's own preliminary analysis-- submitted secretly to its regulators--reveals that the destructive service reduction plan to slow mail delivery and shut down postal plants will lead to a more than 9-percent decrease in first-class mail and a 7.7-percent reduction in all mail. The Postal Service itself made a preliminary estimate that the first year losses alone would be $5.2 billion. That would consume a major portion of any supposed savings intended by the Postal Service's plan.

Of course, now that these numbers have become public, the Postal Service is backpedaling rapidly and criticizing its own estimates, claiming the survey questions gave the respondents--postal customers-- too much information about the drastic nature of the proposed service reductions before asking if these mailers would likely pull out of the system in response to these changes. If the Postal Service is aware of a legitimate methodological flaw in the study, then I would urge a public release of the study and an explanation for why it was submitted to the regulators if, in fact, it is so flawed.

The findings of the survey do not surprise me. They are consistent with what I am hearing from major postal customers. Mailers are all too aware of the destructive course postal leaders are pursuing. Once customers turn to communication options other than the mail system, they will not be coming back, and the Postal Service will be sucked further and further into a death spiral. Companies large and small that rely on the mail tell me if service continues to deteriorate, they will conduct more business online and encourage their customers to switch to online services for bill paying and other transactions.

Let me give an example from Bangor, ME, which illustrates this economic reality. A small business owner from the hometown in which I am living now sent me an e-mail he received from the company that processes his payroll. In the e-mail, the payroll company reminds the small business owner that the Postal Service intends to close a nearby processing center in Hampden, ME. The payroll firm recommends the best option for the small business would be to move to an electronic option outside the mail system. It also offered another option of using nonmail delivery or pickup services.

My point is this example reflects the realities of commerce. Degrade service or raise prices and we don't get more revenue, we get fewer customers and less revenue.

One bright light for me, with respect to the bill we are considering, is that we first should do no harm in the form of hastening the volume decline through ill-conceived policy changes. That is why the downsizing of the labor force and excess capacity the Postmaster General has stated are critical to saving the Postal Service must be carried out in a way that preserves service and does not inflict avoidable harm on dedicated postal workers.

There are naturally strong opinions on what should be done to save the Postal Service, and the bill and the substitute we are bringing to the floor is the product of careful consideration of those competing positions and priorities. As with any bipartisan compromise, this is not the bill each of us alone would have crafted, but we came together because our goal of saving the Postal Service is so important. Senator Lieberman, Senator Scott Brown, Senator Carper, and I consulted extensively with postal customers, both business and residential, with postal workers, with the Postmaster General, the GAO, the administration, and local communities deeply committed to preserving their postal facilities. We have

deliberated together literally day after day, meeting after meeting on these complex issues. The product of these deliberations--the 21st Century Postal Service Act--provides the right tools to the Postal Service, with the right checks and balances, to set it back on course.

First, let me give our colleagues some background. The first thing we did was analyze the Postal Service's costs. The fact is labor-related expenses are responsible for 80 percent of the Postal Service's costs. It is always painful to recognize that workforce costs are simply too high, especially when the employees are as dedicated as those working at the Postal Service. Avoiding reductions in these expenses is simply not an option as we hope to save as many jobs as possible, both within the Postal Service and within the broader mailing community. But we can do so in a compassionate, fair way.

Our bill would transfer to the Postal Service the nearly $11 billion it has overpaid into the Federal Employees Retirement System. We would direct the Postmaster General to use a portion of this money for retirement and separation incentives in order to reduce the size of the workforce compassionately. Let me emphasize--because there are misunderstandings on this point--the refund from FERS--the Federal Employees Retirement System--is not taxpayer money. It was contributed by the Postal Service using ratepayer dollars. It is an overpayment that was identified and confirmed by the actuaries at OPM and verified by the GAO.

In fact, GAO recently confirmed OPM's assessment that this figure now has risen to nearly $11 billion. We would encourage early separation and retirement incentives, capped at the current Federal limit of $25,000, combined with retirement incentives, such as giving an extra year of service credit if the postal worker is in the CSRS system--the old Civil Service Retirement System--or 2 years if the worker is in the FERS system. That would allow the Postmaster General, by his estimate, to compassionately reduce the workforce by about 100,000 people, a goal he has said in the past was necessary to achieve solvency.

Let me give our colleagues another important fact. More than one- third of all postal workers are already eligible for retirement, so these incentives should be effective and, as the chairman indicated, would save an estimated $8 billion a year.

The bipartisan legislation also includes a new requirement that arbitrators rendering binding decisions in labor disputes consider the financial condition of the Postal Service. I know it may defy belief that an arbitrator would not automatically consider the looming bankruptcy of the Postal Service when ruling on contract disputes, but some previous arbitrators have disregarded this factor in their decisions because the requirement to consider it was not explicitly listed in law. We would remedy this problem.

For the first time in 35 years, the bill also brings sorely needed commonsense reforms to the Federal workers' compensation program--not only at the Postal Service but across the Federal Government. But why is this particularly important to the Postal Service? Forty percent of workers who are on the long-term rolls for Federal workers' comp are postal workers. The Postal Service contributes about $1 billion a year in Federal comp costs.

This program, intended as assistance for injured workers to help them recover and return to work, currently has more than 10,000 postal and Federal employees age 70 or older, 2,000 of whom are postal employees. They receive a higher payment on workers' comp than they would under the standard retirement program, even though it is obvious at that age they would not be returning to work. In fact, 430 of these workers, Federal and postal, are over 90 years of age and 6 workers are 100 years old or older. These employees clearly are never going to return to work, and they should be switched to the normal retirement system.

It is unfair to employees who are working to the normal retirement age. It does not serve injured workers well. It also imposes an enormous financial burden on the Postal Service.

Our bill, I would note, in its workers' comp reforms, is very similar to the reforms proposed by the Obama administration. It would make benefit levels more comparable to what the majority of States are offering their workers. Let me describe just a few more of these issues.

First, for people past retirement age the median annual workers' compensation benefit is 26 percent higher than the median benefit received by Federal and postal workers who retire under the regular retirement system. Thirty-nine of the 50 States pay their workers' comp recipients two-thirds or less of their salary. Yet most Federal beneficiaries receive 75 percent of their salary, and that is tax free.

The program has also been shown to be highly vulnerable to fraud and abuse. That is not good for workers who are truly injured and need the help of this program. Let me mention two flaws. The program relies heavily on self-reported data, and it does not now require the use of independent physicians to assess the initial or continued eligibility of claimants. These vulnerabilities are not hypothetical, but they surely are costly.

The IG of the Department of Labor reports that the removal of a single fraudulent claim saves on average $300,000 to $500,000. When the IG reviewed over 10,000 claimant files a decade ago, there were irregularities in almost 75 percent of the cases. That resulted in benefits being reduced or ended for more than 500 claimants, saving almost $5 million a year in benefits that otherwise would be paid.

I note that the Obama administration has proposed many similar changes and also has recommended that they apply across the board so we do not have two different systems. We agree.

I want to move to another issue about which there has been a lot of discussion. The Postal Service blames some of its financial woes on a 2006 requirement to prefund its retiree health plan--a requirement the Postal Service endorsed at the time, I might add. The Postal Service currently owes $46.2 billion to cover the costs of the promises it has made to provide health care to future retirees. That unfunded liability is not going away. Nevertheless, the payments for retirement health benefits could be eased by coming up with a new amortization schedule that stretches out the payments. That is what we have done.

We have established a 40-year amortization schedule for the unfunded liability, and we would also reduce the requirement that the fund reach 100 percent of the liability. We have changed that to 80 percent, which is more consistent with what is done by the private sector.

I note this would reduce the annual payment by approximately $2 to $3 billion while still keeping promises to workers and avoiding a taxpayer bailout. Our bill gives authority to the Postal Service to save money through greater efficiency in its operations. We do so in a way that ensures that rural America will not be left behind. As the Presiding Officer is well aware, across America communities are up in arms over the Postal Service's plans to close about 3,200 post offices. It has become clear to me, in looking at the specifics, that common sense often is not applied in these decisions.

We do not mandate that every single post office remains open nor do we dictate that an arbitrary number should close. Instead, our bill requires the Postal Service to work with the Postal Regulatory Commission to establish for the first time clear standards for what constitutes reasonable access to postal services for communities and for customers. These would be developed by considering important factors, including distance, travel time, access to transportation, weather, and geography.

That means if the Postal Service tries to close a post office and that closure would result in this new service standard being violated, the community, under our bill, could appeal the closure to the Commission. If the Commission agrees, its binding decision would require the service to be preserved.

The Presiding Officer, Senator Tester, and Senator Moran from Kansas have worked very hard on the language in this provision. I thank them for that. What is more, the bill requires the Postmaster General to work with communities to offer cost-saving alternatives to full-time, full-service post

offices in lieu of totally shuttering a beloved post office in the heart of town.

There are so many options the Postal Service could use. For example, moving the post office into a retail store, providing hours part time-- say at 7 to 9 in the morning, when people are going to work, or 5 to 7 in the evening when they are coming home. We need to be creative. In recent months we have seen the Postal Service announce a number of Draconian measures, including the closing of hundreds of processing plants and implementing disastrous service standards changes, including a proposal to do away with overnight delivery, one of the real advantages the Postal Service has.

Our bill takes a better approach that helps the Postal Service rightsize its excess capacity while still maintaining what is one of its most valuable assets: its ability to deliver mail overnight to many areas.

Let me give another example. The Postal Service has proposed closing one of two processing plants in the State of Maine, the one that is located in Hampden, ME, in the central eastern part of our State. That means for northern Maine communities that are sending mail between those communities, the letter would have to take a roundtrip of more than 600 miles to be processed and returned. That makes no sense at all. It clearly will lead to a marked slowness in delivery, a deterioration in service, and, I would argue, probably to more costs. That plant could be downsized, but it should never be closed.

There are so many options that need to be pursued by the Postal Service in order to prevent service from deteriorating and delivery times from lengthening because, once again, that will drive more mail out of the system, and that is the last thing the Postal Service needs.

I would say that many postal employees have pointed out to me, as has the inspector general, that there are excessive bureaucratic costs at the Postal Service. For example, the Postal Service--even though it is insisting on closing all these facilities--already has over 67 million square feet of excess property that it has yet to dispose of. The bill requires the Postal Service to devise a plan to close and consolidate these administrative offices around the country and to start implementing that plan within the year.

We have also encouraged collocation of postal facilities with other Federal agencies, an idea that Senator Carper had to minimize excess capacity. We also authorized the Postal Service to convert delivery from front door to the curb where it is practical and cost effective. The Postal Service inspector general has estimated this could save as much as $4.5 billion a year.

Another controversial issue that we tackle in this bill is the Postmaster General's proposal to eliminate Saturday delivery. I have said repeatedly that I believe abandoning Saturday delivery will once again drive mail out of the system and do more harm than good. Our compromise prohibits eliminating Saturday delivery for at least 2 years so that cost-cutting reforms can be implemented. If at that point to achieve solvency the Postal Service needs to go to 5-day delivery, it can do so if it proves it has done everything else to cut its excessive costs. Again, reducing service should be the last resort, not the first option. Our hope is that the cost-cutting tools we provide the Postal Service in this bill will allow this service reduction to be avoided.

There is much more in this bill which we will discuss as the debate goes on. Today is just the first step in what I know is going to be a long journey. But the point is we must pass a postal reform bill. The House also has a bill that awaits floor consideration, and more compromises will have to be made along the way. But we cannot forget the urgency of this task.

I ask my colleagues to work with us during the upcoming floor debate, and I urge their support for final passage. The fact is it is up to us to preserve this vital American institution, the U.S. Postal Service.

Madam President, at a later time I am going to speak in strong opposition to the substitute offered by the Senator from Arizona, but I must say that he has every right to offer that substitute. We should fully debate it, and then we should vote on it. I am puzzled by the procedural steps that have been taken this afternoon to curtail the debate and amendment process on this bill without our even trying to get an agreement on the number of amendments, perhaps limiting them to relevant amendments, which I think would have been a fair way to proceed. So as much as I am opposed to the substance of Senator McCain's substitute and believe it is ill-advised, I do believe we should have a full debate on it and a vote on it. That is what we are here for.

There are many different views on how we should save the Postal Service, but surely all of us ought to recognize that we simply cannot allow the Postal Service to fail. It is the linchpin of a trillion dollar mailing industry that employs 8.7 million Americans. It is absolutely vital. It also is an American institution with roots going to our Constitution, and we worked very hard in a bipartisan way on our Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to come up with a very good bill that would put the Postal Service back on the right track.

It would allow it to compassionately downsize its workforce, which it needs to do. As painful as that is, we would do it in a compassionate way by giving authority for buyouts and retirement incentives similar to those used by the private sector. The Postmaster General has said he believes he could reduce the number of employees by 100,000 without layoffs but by giving these incentives, particularly since more than 33 percent of the Postal Service employees are already eligible for retirement.

Senator McCain has a different view on how we should go about that. He has a different view on Saturday delivery, on rural post offices, on overnight delivery of mail, all of which I think are important. Our bill does not prevent the closure of every single post office, nor does it dictate that a certain number remain open or closed, for that matter. What we did is we set standards. That is the way it should be. We have the Postal Regulatory Commission set standards for access to postal services, and those standards are supposed to include consideration of such factors as distance to the next post office, geography, public transportation, and weather factors. That is far better than a one-size-fits-all approach that the Senator from Arizona would have or the approach used by the Postmaster General to target 3,200 post offices without even looking at whether there are alternative and far less expensive ways to deliver the services. And there are.

For example, a rural post office could be colocated in a pharmacy or a grocery store. It could still exist but run different hours, perhaps be opened from 7 to 9 in the morning and 5 to 7 at night. I wager that a lot of my constituents would appreciate that. That would be on their way to work in the morning and on their way home at night. It could colocate with a State office or local office, move into a townhall, or have a Federal agency move in with the post office. It could offer services that are available generally at State and local offices. There are so many creative ways we can preserve postal services in rural areas and yet reduce costs, and I believe the Postal Service needs to be far more creative in its approach.

But I do not support the approach Senator McCain has laid out. One of his proposals would create a new bureaucracy--I thought we were against creating new bureaucracies around here--such as a new control board that would be over the board of governors and would have these dictatorial powers over the Postal Service. That is a proposal that I don't think makes sense.

Our approach is to have a commission that would examine the governance of the Postal Service, but perhaps what we should do, if there is something wrong with the structure of the board of governors-- it was substantially revised in 2006--is then we should

revamp the board of governors, not create this new superbureaucracy on top of it.

I agree with the comments of the Senator from Massachusetts on Saturday delivery. The provision that Senator McCain has to move directly to 5-day delivery and his negative comments on the fact that we would prohibit that from happening for 2 years misunderstands the intent of our bill. It is not to say that might never happen; it is to say that reducing service should be the last resort, not the first option. The Postal Service has an advantage that it delivers 6 days a week.

Now if, in fact, after all the costs and waste and excess have been wrung out of the system and the Postal Service is still not solvent after 2 years, then we may have to move to 5-day delivery. But to give up that advantage immediately, I can tell you what is going to happen: The volume of mail will decline further. And if the volume of mail declines further after having a 26-percent decline over the past 5 years, what is going to happen? Revenues will plummet once again. So we need to be very careful about cutting service because it leads to mailers leaving the system. And once the big mailers, in particular, leave the Postal Service, they are not coming back, and the Postal Service will sink further and further into a death spiral.

My approach is to try to keep and grow the customers for the Postal Service. I think moving to Saturday delivery would drive more mail away and would hurt service and thus decrease the volume. So I do not think that is a good approach. But the reason for our 2-year delay is not an endless study, as has been described by the Senator from Arizona. It is to allow time for the retirement incentives to go into effect, the downsizing of the workforce to go into effect, the workers comp reforms to go into effect, the new arbitration provisions to go into effect, the administrative efficiencies that we mandate to go into effect-- countless provisions of the bill to go into effect. I believe if they are aggressively and well implemented by the Postal Service leaders--if they are--there will be no need to eliminate Saturday delivery. That is the reason for the provision in our bill. But we recognize that maybe that will not happen. Maybe the provisions will not be aggressively and well implemented, and the Postal Service will find that it needs to take that extra step. But, surely, our first approach ought to be to implement cuts without hurting service.

Let me give an example of that from my own State. In Hampden, ME, it is one of the two postal processing centers for the entire State of Maine. The other one is in Scarborough, ME, in southern Maine. The Hampden facility is absolutely essential for processing mail from the broad reaches of northern Maine, eastern Maine, and parts of western Maine.

Under the Postal Service's proposal, the Hampden facility would be closed. That virtually eliminates the possibility of overnight delivery for roughly two-thirds of the State of Maine by geography. It means a letter mailed from my hometown of Caribou, in northern Maine, to Presque Isle, just 10 or 11 miles away, would have to make a 600-mile roundtrip to Scarborough, ME, in order to be processed and delivered. I can't imagine how many days that is going to take, particularly in the winter, and this is all ground transportation.

So that is the kind of ill-conceived decision our bill is intended to prevent because it is the kind of decision that is going to cause postal customers to take their business elsewhere. In proof of that, I received an e-mail from a small business owner in Bangor, ME, which is the town right next to Hampden, who told me he had already received a notice from his payroll company saying if the Hampden facility closes, then they recommend that he move to electronic payroll or they will hand deliver the checks from their payroll. So that, again, is lost business for the Postal Service.

Could things be done at the Hampden facility to save money? Absolutely. If the facility's size is too big compared to the volume of mail it is now processing, reduce the footprint. Rent out part of the facility. A major mailer would love to be right in the same building as the postal processing center. It could easily be reconfigured to accomplish that. So the Postal Service can do a lot to reduce its costs without doing away with overnight delivery, with Saturday delivery, and with the treatment of first-class mail in the way that we have been accustomed.

Coming from New Hampshire, I know the Presiding Officer has a special appreciation for this: The steps that will be taken if we do not act will leave rural America behind. Not every part of my State has access to broadband. We talk all the time about how people can go on the Internet. Well, they can't in parts of my State. We are making progress in that area, but there are many rural areas in Maine that do not have access to broadband. So they do not have alternatives.

Weekly and daily newspapers would be at a terrible disadvantage if overnight delivery is no longer available for two-thirds of the State of Maine. Think about that. Think what it means for bill paying for those small businesses sending out bills to their customers.

Think about what it means to elderly individuals who are receiving prescription drugs through the mail--very common in my State, which is one of the States with the oldest population in the Nation. A lot of our elderly in Maine are, particularly in the winter months, essentially homebound and they rely on getting those pharmaceuticals through the mail. So if we do away with Saturday delivery, close the processing plants, no more overnight delivery, Monday holidays as well--I have talked to the Postmaster General, and he has conceded to me that even a first-class package or letter mailed on a Thursday would not arrive until a Tuesday. That is a long time when a person is waiting for vital medication.

So our approach, our fundamental premise, is to recognize that the Postal Service must become leaner, more streamlined, more efficient. It must downsize to respond to declining volume, but it must be smart in how it does so. It must do so in a way that does not alienate more of its customers because if it loses more of its customers, volume will decline and revenues will decline. It is that simple, and that is why this bill has been so carefully crafted.

This is not the bill I alone would have proposed, and I think that is true of all four of the sponsors of this bill. But we did what we are supposed to do in the Senate. We worked together. We had countless meetings, at times--I think the Senator from Connecticut will agree-- endless meetings, to hammer out these provisions, to strike compromises.

We consulted widely with our colleagues--with GAO, with the Postal Service, with large mailers and small mailers, with the greeting card industry, with the newspaper industry, with magazine publishers, with anyone who had a stake--with the postal unions--and we got their suggestions and we crafted the bill to the best of our ability. We worked hard on it. I think it is a good bill.

I am very disappointed and indeed puzzled why we can't now proceed with debate on amendments on this bill and why we have a cloture motion on this bill already filed. That makes no sense to me. We are acting in good faith. We are open for business right now. We could be taking up amendments right now. I hope the leader will reconsider and allow us to do this bill in the usual way. I would pledge to him--and he knows I am sincere in this--to work with him to try to come up with amendments and see if we can go back and forth, side to side, and start working through them. We are here. We are open for business. We are ready to go.

This bill matters. Our economy is still very fragile. If the Postal Service stops delivering mail this fall, it will be a crushing blow to this economy. If it stops delivering mail in certain areas or the mail is very slow, it will also hurt this economy.

We cannot leave rural America behind. The mandate of the Postal Service is universal service. That means whether a person lives in the far reaches of Alaska or at the bottom of the Grand Canyon in Arizona or on an island off the coast of Maine; all are supposed to be able to have access to the Postal Service. It is one of the things that unites us as a country.

So I urge my colleagues to come together in good faith and work through

what I believe is a very important bill with a vital mission; that is, to save the U.S. Postal Service.

Thank you, Madam President.

Mr. President, today I will vote in favor of proceeding to the President's latest tax plan because it is essential we begin the debate on comprehensive tax reform. I do this despite my disappointment that the President has not proposed a serious starting point. Our Nation's tax code needs to be overhauled, from top to bottom. The tax plan offered by the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson Commission--a commission the President himself created--offered a proposal a year and a half ago that should have been the foundation for a serious debate for such an overhaul. But the President failed to show leadership, and allowed that proposal to wallow. Instead, he has asked us to consider a bill today that he himself has called ``a gimmick.''

I believe we should be debating comprehensive tax reform aimed at creating a simpler, fairer, pro-growth tax code. Such reform should lower rates for job creators and middle-income Americans, while increasing the share of taxes paid by the wealthy.

A key to reform is simplification: just last year, according to the IRS, there were 579 changes to a tax code that is already more than 65,000 pages long. No one can keep up such complexity--it hobbles our economy, and exasperates the American taxpayer.

I have said that multimillionaires and billionaires can pay more to help us deal with our deficit, and I have voted for surtaxes on the very wealthy in the past. In fact, I have even introduced legislation calling for such surtaxes. However, I have maintained that any such legislation must include a ``carve out'' to protect small business owners who pay taxes through the individual income tax system. Our nation's small businesses must not be lumped-in with millionaires and billionaires and exposed to the same type of taxes designed for the very wealthy. That is why a ``carve-out'' to shield small businesses owners from tax increases is so important. These small business owner- operators are on the front lines of our economy, and of the communities in which they live. The income that shows up on their tax returns is critical to their ability to finance investment, and grow their businesses. Left in their hands, this income will lead to more jobs, and will buy the tools that help American workers compete.

Comprehensive tax reform and simplification is not only a matter of fairness, but is essential to laying the foundation for our nation's long-term economic growth. There is no contradiction between fairness and growth--both can be advanced together. I urge my colleagues to join me in seeking true reform that advances both of these goals.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business for up to 15 minutes.

Mr. President, during the past week, the Supreme Court heard arguments on the constitutionality of President Obama's health care law. This week also marks the 2-year anniversary of the President's signing that law.

There is no question that our health care system required and still requires significant reform. In passing this law, however, Congress failed to follow the Hippocratic oath of ``first, do no harm.'' The new law increases health care costs, hurts our seniors and health care providers, and imposes billions of dollars in new taxes, fees, and penalties. This, in turn, will lead to fewer choices and higher insurance costs for many middle-income American families and most small businesses--the opposite of what real health care reform should do.

I find it particularly disturbing that President Obama's health care law does not do enough to rein in the cost of health care and to provide consumers with more affordable choices. In fact, Medicare's Chief Actuary estimates the law will increase health care spending across the economy by more than $300 billion. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the law will actually increase premiums for the average family plan by $2,100. Moreover, a recent report issued by the CBO found that the new law will cost $1.76 trillion between now and the year 2022. That is twice as much as the bill's original 10-year pricetag of $940 million.

The new law will also mean fewer choices for many middle-income Americans and small businesses. All individual and small group policies sold in our country will soon have to fit into one of four categories. One size does not fit all.

In Maine, almost 90 percent of those purchasing coverage in the individual market have a policy that is different from the standards in the new law.

I am also very concerned about the impact of the law on Maine's small businesses, which are our State's job creation engine. The new law discourages small companies from hiring new employees and from paying them more. It could also lead to onerous financial penalties even for those small businesses that are struggling to provide health insurance for their employees.

According to a Gallup survey taken earlier this year, 48 percent of small businesses are not hiring because of the potential cost of health insurance under the new law. The Director of the Congressional Budget Office has testified that the new health care law will mean 800,000 fewer American jobs over the next decade.

Even when the law tries to help small businesses, it misses the mark. For example, I have long been a proponent of tax credits to help small businesses afford health insurance for their employees. The new credits for small businesses in the health care law, however, are so poorly structured and phased out in such a way that businesses will actually be penalized when they hire new workers or pay their employees more. Moreover, they are temporary. The tax credits are temporary and can only be claimed for 2 years in an insurance exchange.

I am also very concerned that the new law is paid for, in part, through more than a $500 billion cut in Medicare--a program which is already facing serious long-term financing problems. It simply does not make sense to rely on deep cuts in Medicare to finance a new entitlement program at a time when the number of seniors in this country is on the rise. We need to fix and save Medicare, not add to its financial strains.

Moreover, according to the administration's own Chief Actuary, those deep Medicare cuts could push one in five hospitals, nursing homes, and home health providers into the red. I am particularly concerned about the impact on rural States like Maine. Many of those providers could simply stop taking Medicare patients. That would jeopardize access to care for millions of our seniors.

It did not have to be that way. The bitter rhetoric and the partisan gridlock over the past few years have obscured the very important fact that there are many health care reforms that have overwhelming support in both parties.

For example, we should have been able to agree on generous tax credits for self-employed individuals and small businesses to help them afford health insurance. That would have reduced the number of uninsured Americans. We should have been able to agree on insurance market reforms that would prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to children who have preexisting conditions, that would permit children to remain on their parents' insurance policies until age 26, that would require standardized claim forms to reduce administrative costs, and that would allow consumers to purchase insurance across State lines. Those are just some examples of health care reforms that would enjoy and do enjoy widespread bipartisan support.

We also should be able to agree on delivery system reforms that reward value over volume and quality instead of quantity. We should be able to agree on reforms that increase transparency throughout the health care system so consumers can compare prices and quality more easily.

I know the Presiding Officer's State, and Dartmouth College in particular, has done a great deal of work in this

area, as have many health care providers and many hospitals in the State of Maine. They are experimenting with new delivery models that will help them better control chronic disease treatments, which, in turn, will not only improve the quality of health care but also help to lower costs.

We should be able to agree on ways to address the serious health care workforce shortages that plague rural and small-town America. Simply having an insurance card will do you little or no good if there is no one available to provide the health care.

In short, I believe we made--Congress made--a real error in passing ObamaCare. We should repeal the law so we can start over, to work together in a bipartisan way to draft a health care bill that achieves the consensus goals of providing more choice, containing health care costs, improving quality and access, and making health care coverage more affordable for all Americans.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, this week marks the 2-year anniversary of the signing into law of President Obama's health care bill. There was no question that our health care system required substantial reform. In passing this law, however, Congress failed to follow the Hippocratic oath, ``first do no harm.'' The new law increases health care costs, hurts our seniors and health care providers, and imposes billions of dollars in new taxes, fees, and penalties. This will lead to fewer choices and higher insurance costs for many middle-income Americans and most small businesses--the opposite of what real health care reform should do.

I find it particularly disturbing that President Obama's health care law does not do enough to rein in the cost of health care and provide consumers with more affordable choices. In fact, Medicare's Chief Actuary estimates that the law will increase health spending across the economy by $311 billion, and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the law will actually increase premiums for an average family plan by $2,100. Moreover, a recent report issued by the CBO found that the new law will cost $1.76 trillion between now and 2022. That is twice as much as the bill's original 10-year price tag of $940 billion.

The new law also means fewer choices for many middle-income Americans and small businesses. All individual and small group policies sold in the United States will soon have to fit into one of four categories. One size simply does not fit all. In Maine, almost 90 percent of those purchasing coverage in the individual market have a policy that is different from the standards in the new law.

I am also very concerned about the impact the law will have on Maine's small businesses, which are our State's job creation engine. The new law discourages small businesses from hiring new employees and paying them more. It could also lead to onerous financial penalties, even for those small businesses that are struggling to provide health insurance for their employees. According to a 2012 Gallup Survey, 48 percent of small businesses are not hiring because of the potential cost of health insurance under the health care law, and the Director of the Congressional Budget Office has testified that the new law will mean 800,000 fewer American jobs over the next decade.

Even where the law tries to help small businesses, it misses the mark. For example, I have long been a proponent of tax credits to help small businesses cover employee health insurance costs. The new credits for small businesses in the health care law, however, are poorly structured. They are phased out in such a way that businesses will actually be penalized when they hire new workers or pay their employees more. Moreover, they are temporary and can only be claimed for 2 years in the exchange.

Finally, I am very concerned that the new law is paid for, in large part, through more than $500 billion cuts to Medicare, a program which already is facing long-term financing problems. It simply does not make sense to rely on deep cuts in Medicare to finance a new entitlement program at a time when the number of Medicare beneficiaries is on the rise.

Moreover, according to the administration's own Chief Actuary, these deep cuts could push one in five hospitals, nursing homes, and home health providers into the red. Many of these providers could simply stop taking Medicare patients, which would jeopardize access to care for millions of seniors.

It doesn't have to be this way. The bitter rhetoric and partisan gridlock over the past few years have obscured the very important fact that there are many health care reforms that have overwhelming support in both parties. For example, we should be able to agree on generous tax credits for self-employed individuals and small businesses to help them afford health insurance, thus reducing the number of uninsured. We should be able to agree on insurance market reforms that would prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to children who have preexisting conditions, permit children to remain on their parents' policies until age 26, require standardized claim forms to reduce costs, and allow consumers to purchase insurance across State lines.

We should be able to agree on delivery system reforms that reward value rather than volume and quality over quantity and that increase transparency throughout the health care system. And we should be able to agree on ways to address the serious health care workforce shortages that plague rural and smalltown America. Simply having an insurance card will do you no good if there is no one available to provide the care.

In short, we should repeal ObamaCare so that we can start over to work together to draft a health care bill that achieves the consensus goals of providing more choice, containing health care costs, improving quality and access, and making health care coverage more affordable for all Americans.

Mr. President, high energy prices are hurting individuals and families and businesses, particularly during these difficult economic times. While I support the measure before the Senate this week that would eliminate certain subsidies for the largest integrated oil companies and extend several clean energy tax incentives, the fact that we are not debating a bill to establish a long overdue national energy policy is a missed opportunity.

To better protect American consumers against fluctuating and escalating prices, we need a thoughtful and comprehensive energy policy for the 21st century that promotes greater efficiency, the development of viable alternative fuels, and the production of domestic energy sources, including oil and natural gas, wind, solar, biomass and others.

The rising costs of energy are burdensome to Maine families, truck drivers, farmers, fishermen, schools, small businesses, mills, and factories. Nearly 80 percent of the homes in our State rely on heating oil, leaving Maine families extremely vulnerable to rising crude oil prices. It is clear that we need a dramatic change in our energy policy to protect ourselves from rapid increases in oil prices without sacrificing our environment. We must rally around a national effort to achieve energy independence for our economic, environmental, and national security.

In the nearly 40 years since the 1973 oil embargo, numerous approaches aimed at lowering energy prices have been discussed, such as expediting the review of offshore drilling permits, opening new areas to oil and gas leasing, releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and promoting the development of domestic energy alternatives. The serious will to tackle a comprehensive policy, however, has been lacking.

If the United States is to become less susceptible to volatile global market situations that drive up the cost of heating and transportation fuel, we must decrease our dependence on foreign oil. To accomplish this goal, we must promote energy efficiency and develop viable and affordable domestic energy sources. I have worked to advance these goals by supporting legislation that would promote clean energy initiatives, such as accelerating research of plug-in hybrid technologies for heavy duty trucks, providing incentives for producing alternative fuels from biomass, improving the energy efficiency of cars and appliances, the deployment of deepwater offshore wind power, and expanding domestic production of oil and natural gas in areas approved for exploration.

We must seize every opportunity to use oil more efficiently. For example, the provisions I was able to include in the last Transportation Funding Bill to allow heavy trucks to use Maine's interstate highways instead of being forced on secondary roads and downtown streets will shorten travel distances significantly. The owner-operator of a logging business in Penobscot County told me this change will save him at least 118 gallons of fuel each week. At today's diesel prices, that's more than $500.

The current political turmoil in the Middle East and our reliance on oil from countries with which we have strained relations, such as Venezuela, remind us that decreasing our dependence on foreign oil and relying on domestic energy sources must be the cornerstone of our Nation's energy policy. For this reason, I have supported efforts to increase the responsible domestic production of oil and gas.

Our efforts to increase American production should first be focused on regions that are already open to gas and oil production. The many lessons learned from last year's oil spill disaster in the Gulf will help to ensure stricter safety regulations. I continue to believe, however, that we must also continue to avoid our most sensitive coastal areas and areas that are essential to our fishing industry, such as Georges Bank. Pursuing domestic oil and gas leasing and transport is an important component in reaching this goal, and I remain disappointed in the President's decision to deny the permit for the proposed Keystone XL pipeline. Canada is our Nation's largest trading partner, and construction of the pipeline would create thousands of jobs in our two nations and reduce our reliance on oil from overseas.

Finally, we must also continue to support important safety net programs, including providing adequate resources for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program to help low-income Mainers and senior citizens afford to heat their home. The Weatherization Assistance Program, which helps Mainers improve the efficiency of their homes and substantially reduce heating bills for the long-term, is another very important program.

I remain committed to working with my Senate colleagues to advance effective and commonsense energy legislation that increases America's supply of energy and decreases our demand for foreign oil. This will help us to achieve energy independence and stabilize gas and oil prices.

Madam President, I ask that I be notified after 1 minute.

Mr. President, I rise to speak in favor of the STOCK Act, which we will be voting on very shortly. This legislation is based on a bill that was first introduced in the Senate last fall by Senator Scott Brown, and a similar one introduced by Senator Gillibrand. I wish to commend them both for their work on this legislation. As a cosponsor of Senator Brown's bill, I especially want to recognize his leadership on this issue.

I also wish to recognize Chairman Lieberman for all the work he has done in moving this important bill through our committee, through a robust debate here on the Senate floor, and to final passage today.

Last fall, press reports on ``60 Minutes'' and elsewhere raised the question of whether lawmakers are exempt, either legally or practically, from the insider trading laws.

The STOCK Act is intended to affirm that Members of Congress are not exempt from our laws prohibiting insider trading. As we saw when we first considered this legislation, despite reassurances from legal experts and the SEC that no so such exemption exists, there has been persistent disagreement about the issue. That's why we feel it is important to send a very clear message that Members of Congress are not exempt from the insider trading laws, and that is exactly what this bill does.

Last month the Senate passed its version of the STOCK Act by an overwhelming bipartisan margin of 96 to 3. That bill had, at its heart, the affirmation of a duty arising from the relationship of trust and confidence already owed by Members and their staff

to the Congress, the U.S. Government, and the citizens we serve.

As I explained when we considered the Senate version, this is not a new fiduciary duty, in the traditional sense, but the recognition of an existing duty. The bill we passed also affirmed that the employees of the executive and judicial branches owe a similar duty, and must also comply with the insider trading laws.

There are differences, of course, between the bill we passed last month and the House version before us today. I believe we could have quickly resolved those differences in conference, and would have preferred that route. Still, this is a strong bill that has received overwhelming bipartisan support. It preserves the core of the bill passed by the Senate: to make absolutely clear that elective office is a place for public service, not for private gain. Underscoring that important message is the chief purpose of the STOCK Act, and that is why I support it.

We need to send a strong message that elective office is the place for public service and not private gain.

I yield the remainder of my time to Senator Scott Brown.