Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On Moving Forward With Bipartisan Postal Reform Legislation Despite Republican Obstruction

Washington, D.C. –  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor regarding the need to deliver on bipartisan postal reform legislation despite obstruction from Republican Senator Rick Scott (R-FL). Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

Last night, we had a chance to continue progress on a bipartisan, long overdue Postal Reform bill when I moved to expeditiously fix a few technical errors to the legislation sent to us by the House.  

Sadly my request was blocked by the junior Senator from Florida, without much in the way of clear explanation: for instance he says he wants to stand up for postal workers, but all the organizations representing postal workers strongly support this bill. They are eager for it.

He says he wants to strengthen Medicare, but the Postal Service already pays into Medicare, and the C.B.O. says that this proposal, this bill, will save the government money.

So I hope, for the sake of our postal workers, our Postal Service, and for the millions, tens of millions—even hundreds of millions—of Americans who depend on the Postal Service, that this is not obstruction for obstruction sake.

This is a textbook example of why Americans often get frustrated with the Senate and with Washington. Postal reform is highly bipartisan: it got a majority of votes in the House from both parties. It’s desperately-needed: we all hear from our constituents about snail mail and the price they pay for it.  

[This bill] is backed by both parties in both Houses, including the Chairman and Ranking Member of the relevant committees, the Democratic and Republican leading members of both committees. And it has broad support from the postal workers, who tend to be Democratic and Postmaster DeJoy, who is a friend of President Trump's and was appointed by him.

Nevertheless it was blocked. I am sure that Republicans don’t want to be the party that was responsible for blocking popular and bipartisan postal reform.

The delay is regrettable, but the good news is that we will get bipartisan postal reform done. It has been negotiated for months – and debated for a decade — it has enough bipartisan support, more than enough, ample support, to become law. And I am hopeful we will move it through this chamber as quickly as we can, and that's what the procedural motion I did before was about.

I certainly want to thank my colleagues on both sides for working on this bill—particularly my friend Chairman Gary Peters who spoke passionately last night in defense of the bill and who rebutted all of the Senator from Florida’s arguments handily. I look forward to getting postal reform passed through this chamber very soon.

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