Charles Pierce: Let's have a semi-standing ovation for the U.S. Senate.

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a39386767/postal-service-reform-act-pass-senate/

Let’s have a semi-standing ovation for the U.S. Senate, which finally was able to get out of its own way, and, in a bipartisan fashion, give a solid boot to the jewels of one of the worst pieces of Camp Runamuck flotsam still floating around the current administration. From CNN:

The Postal Service Reform Act -- which cleared the House last month by 342-92 -- would require retired postal employees to enroll in Medicare when eligible, while dropping a previous mandate that forced the agency to cover its health care costs years in advance. Those two measures would save the USPS nearly $50 billion over the next decade, according to the House Oversight Committee. The legislation would also require the USPS to create an online dashboard with local and national delivery time data.

The dropping of that mandate is a huge victory for the USPS and a huge defeat for privatizers like the inexcusable Louis DeJoy. In 2006, something called The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act forced upon the USPS a burden that applied to only the post office and no other government (or private, for that matter) entity. The law made the USPS create a $72 billion fund to cover its retirees health-care costs out 75 years. This guaranteed a paper fiscal “crisis” that was used to justify cuts in service and personnel layoffs. If you wanted to privatize mail delivery in this country, the mandate was an open runway to it.

Of course, in the last administration, DeJoy did everything he could to wreck both the USPS and its reputation, with the added bonus of screwing with the presidential election, which depended on mail-in ballots, something that the last president* and his party continue to demonize. In fact, in December, the USPS settled a lawsuit brought by the NAACP over what that organization saw as discreet ratfcking with mail delivery. From CNN:

Earlier this year, the USPS under DeJoy, a Trump appointee and Republican donor, implemented a 10-year plan aimed at helping and modernizing the financially struggling agency. The policy changes included longer first-class mail delivery times and cuts to post office hours. The NAACP sued the USPS in August 2020, arguing that the changes the agency made led to "unreliable service and widespread delays" in mail delivery and risked delaying mail-in ballots on time for the November 2020 election.

But even the hardest of Republican hardheads have constituents in rural districts who depend on the USPS to run their small businesses, or to get their medicines, or just to make sure Meemaw gets the card on her birthday. Hence, the whole bipartisanship thing, about which senators will crow for a couple of days before they start arm-wrestling again.

*the end*