McCaskill: Postal Service ‘ essential to rural America’
Washington D.C. – U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill used a Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee meeting to discuss the urgent need for reforms to the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to help protect delivery service for Missourians in rural communities.
“Speaking on behalf of hundreds of thousands of rural Missourians, where that post office is a lifeline to the economic vibrancy of that community—I think we are going to be held accountable if we don’t do the really hard work of getting some of these really difficult questions hammered out on the Postal Service,” said McCaskill, who was born in Rolla, Mo. “It is essential to rural America. If we allow this to go to the lowest common denominator, once again, rural America will get the short shrift.”
McCaskill recently authored a letter along with a bipartisan group of 29 Senate colleagues, demanding a delay in the planned consolidation of up to 82 USPS mail processing facilities. The Senators urged the USPS to fulfil its obligations to adequately study the impact of the consolidations, and to inform the public of those impacts, which the USPS Inspector General found that it failed to do.
McCaskill continued: “I think we all know in our gut that if we allow [the Postal Service] to be totally privatized, that it will be our rural constituency that will pay a very heavy price. And I think we have the best postal service in the world, and I think if we allow it to atrophy and say, ‘well, just let privatization take over, let it just be private,’ I’m going to have a hard time explaining that to my rural constituency why we weren’t there for them at this incredibly important time in the history of the postal service.”
Last year, as the U.S. Senate considered legislation reforming the Postal Service, McCaskill won a victory for rural Missouri post offices after the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approved her proposals to increase protections for rural post offices and postal delivery standards. McCaskill also worked with North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp to protect mail processing facilities from closure and preserve six-day mail delivery. The committee voted 9-1 to strengthen the finances of the Postal Service and keep rural post offices open. McCaskill pledged to continue working to improve the bill as consideration continues.
In the previous Congress, McCaskill successfully helped win Senate passage of a sweeping, bipartisan reform bill to keep hundreds of rural post offices in Missouri open and operating—which Republicans in the U.S. House refused to bring up for debate.
Good luck trying to privatize the Postal Service! Who and how even in a
competitive environment has the networking across the country to
not only provide timely servcie standards but keep prices down?
It’s naive to think that small mail service companies could to this and
keep costs where the Postal Service has them. The American people
would go nuts! For any Repukes attempting this it will be political
suicide……..
Senator McCaskill, I do applaud your efforts to force a moratorium on closing postal facilities. However, time should tell you that by now postal management is totally indifferent to your opinion, and the customers’ as well. Thus, it will take much more than writing a letter to “urge” the USPS to do anything. It will take a law, a bill that both sides will support and Obama will sign that orders the Service to keep all facilities open.
With the GOP in control, the working class is truly under the gun, subject to crippling cuts in Social Security benefits, college loans, job security, and other domestic programs millions depend on to survive. While I do not support or endorse people drawing entitlements when they are able to work, which constitutes fraud in my book, for those who come by their benefits honestly, I don’t think Republicans care a damn about those truly unable to work and will gladly watch them starve so the money used to help them can go to the pockets of industry and Wall Street instead.
The Postal Service delivers critical mail like medicine, paychecks and other necessities to every box in America, and needs those facilities to stay open. The management is on a mission to destroy themselves, and the only way to stop them is by making it illegal to do what they plan to do. You must introduce legislation to bar the USPS from closing plants now. Thousands of jobs hang in the balance.
Umm.. Mrs. McCaskill.. What was the first bill that the Republican controlled House and Senate just tried to past the 2nd day in office?? To slash Social Security!!! Thank God President Obama said he would Veto it…. Like you said in your committee meeting.. It’s the Republican agenda to privatize the U.S. Postal Service.. And now that “privatize everything “Mitt Romney is now running for President ( for the 3rd time ).. We have to elect Hilliary Clinton!!! Ask your local Wal-Mart employee how it feels to work for the richest company in the U.S. but pays their employees crappy wages and no pension and health plans.. Start fighting for your job, your quality of life, your future!! We all provide a great quality of life for our wives and children.. The Republicans could careless about the poor and middle class!! Wake – up Postal Workers