good morning everyone the subcommittee on federal workforce postal service in the district columbia will now come to water good morning ranking member jay fitz and members of the subcommittee welcome to the subcommittee second business meeting of the one hundred eleventh congress to late today we need to markup h r twenty two the bill to amend chapter eighty nine of title five united states code to allow the united states postal service to pay its share of contributions for annuitants health benefits out of the postal service retiring health benefits fund the bill is intended to grant financial relief to the postal service from two thousand and nine to two thousand and sixteen i would like to thank committee members  a leader on this issue since of law as i can remember and has offered great input to trying to solve the problems that we face at the as the postal service and we regret we congratulate him on his recent announcement but we regret that we will lose his services at some point and i just want to say how much i have enjoyed working with mr mchugh both as a  member of the minority and as a member of the majority although i must admit i prefer our relationship since we've been in the majority danny davis is well i know we have several hearings going on at the same time this morning as always but  danny davis is well the gentleman from illinois each john mchugh and danny davis are shown great leadership on this issue i am a newcomer relatively compared to their service but they introduced and  have been instrumental in shepherding h r two thousand and two along this congress you both mr davis mr mchugh have been champions of postal issues in the postal service in general and are responsible for laying the groundwork for helping to provide some much needed financial relief to the postal service in these difficult economic times and we users of the system as well as the people of the united states are in your debt the postal service is faced with rising costs and i'm president of declines in mail volume it has incurred net losses in ten of the last eleven quarters the postal service lost two point two billion dollars in the first two quarters of fiscal year two thousand and nine and lost another four hundred million in april two thousand and nine and almost fifteen percent higher law stand in april two thousand and eight despite recent efforts to cut costs across the board the postal service is still facing a potential cash shortfall of nearly two billion dollars by the end of two thousand and nine and is rapidly approaching a critical financial state there is a consensus among the postal service and its stakeholders that congress needs to take action we need to help the postal service mitigates its let's losses and achieve financial solvency and h r twenty two is the legislative vehicle to accomplish that by permitting health benefits obligations to be paid out of the postal retiree health benefits fun rather than out of the postal service is operating revenue at the time h r twenty two has over three hundred thirty five co sponsors which is a testament that members of congress recognize the severity of the postal service  situation and are interested in being helpful in that regard however it should be mentioned that the relief being sought in h r two thousand and two is only one piece of a larger package of reforms that the postal service and this subcommittee and congress will have to confront and short h r twenty two cannot be a substitute for longer term solutions to the postal services financial problems and the near future we plan to do a number of things including explore the postal service's plan to achieve continued savings we need to re evaluate the aggressive retiree health benefit prepayment schedule which the postal service must adhere to the pay a study we need to study long term consolidation plans for the processing delivery and retail networks and examine the appropriateness of the postal services business model in today's economy these problems will not be easy to address but we need to take them on to avoid a scenario where the postal service comes hat in hand to the american taxpayer as chairman of this god subcommittee i look forward to the movement of this important piece of legislation i thank you all for your attention and attendance this morning and i now yield to the ranking member  in the right direction and i particularly want to thank mr mchugh who has put years and years of effort and dedicated his time and talent to a number of these issues particularly this i look forward to supporting it i also briefly mention that today i'm mr chairman i appreciate if you look at a proposal that i'm going to put forward that would allow the census bureau or require the census bureau to tap into the resources of the postal service to conduct the of the two thousand and ten census here the post office has over seven hundred fifty thousand employees and yet at the same time we have a census department that's going to spend has an excess of eleven billion dollars at their disposal to on april first of next year conduct the census they're going to be hiring seven hundred fifty plus thousand people to go to every home yet we had a very trusted workforce in the post office that already does go to these people's homes so i would appreciate your consideration of looking at that without that today and just want to make note of that and i yield back the balance of my time thank you thank you and i and i will consider i haven't had a chance to read it this morning but i'll look it over i would also like to now recognize really one of the leaders on on this issue and all issues regarding the postal service the gentleman from new york mr mchugh for five minutes thank you mr chairman i hope not to take five minutes  me first of all to express my words of appreciation to you for your kind comments but more importantly for your leadership having sat behind that gavel for some six years and i couldn't agree more it's a far more comfortable chair than those of us are provided on the minority side but more than that you've shown able leadership and i truly and i know i speak for many many who are concerned about this vital issue  believe is well vital leadership in what is at least on the surface a seemingly simple bill once you begin to deal with c b l you know m b and others it becomes far more troublesome than and i commend you for for your steps you've taken here today and look forward to working with in the days in the future and i know the distinguished ranking member looks forward to that opportunity as well and i thank him for his kind comments i'd want to give a tip in a hat to danny davis he's been such a great partner for a good number of years on all matters postal and h r twenty two that's before us here this morning's most recent example of  graciously mention the rather substantial number of co sponsors then and it is indeed as you noted mr chairman of fact that numbers are beginning rightfully to pay attention to the fortunes of what perhaps in the past they failed to recognize one of the most important institutions in their constituents day to day lives and that's that's important in it and it speaks well of the members of congress but also speaks well of folks who are out here in the audience the union groups  the postal management associations the leadership at love plaza all who who work so hard to help heighten awareness of this challenge and help coalesce and crystallize the thoughts and the response that  r twenty two represents we had high designs and great objectives when we passed postal reform just a few short years ago part of those high objectives was indeed this pre funding requirement that we're now looking to adjust and adjust in a way that i think would have dramatic impact on the postal services ability to weather some difficult  times to provide as you noted mr chairman the absolutely essential i couldn't agree with you more steps that need to be taken both in the congress and in the postal administration and the postal groups to try to effect wider reforms and to find a way forward this six billion dollars a year funding prefunding requirement is unique in the federal government we're not dragging the postal service down below some national standard it's the only federal agency that has any money at all in their prefunding and even if h r twenty two were to be passed as the manager's amendment will configure it verbatim  it'll it'll still have a dramatic a flat affect on unfun growth from some thirty two billion dollars in two thousand and eight to seventy point five billion in two thousand and twenty thousand and sixteen rather twenty sixteen u ltimately some seventy seven percent of full funding on their prefunding requirement that's a that's a pretty good and pretty i think admirable achievement under any circumstance but these are tough economic times one that the prefunding requirement doesn't provide a way by which to respond to and yet under your leadership today mr chairman we're going to we're going to provide that opportunity so again my thanks to all and i look forward to supporting the managers in them and the ideal back i thank the gentleman during no other speakers wishing to address this i will now call up h r twenty two the clerk will read the title of the bill h r two thousand and two a bill to amend the chapter eighty nine of title five united states code to allow the united states service to pay its share of contributions for new attends health benefits out of the postal service retiree health benefits fund i ask unanimous consent of the bill be considered as read and open the amendment process if there are any amendments without objection so lorded i believe that i have an amendment in the nature of a substitute at the desk the clerk will please designate the amendment and then in the nature of a substitute h r twenty two offered by mr lindsey of massachusetts without objection the amendment is considered as read and i recognize myself for five minutes the amendment i'm offering this morning for consideration is fairly straightforward in that it takes the language in the introduced version of h r twenty two and modifies the total number of years in which the postal service would be permitted to for to defer a payment for its share of contributions for health benefits of current retirees to the trust fund instead of committing eight years worth of payments to be drawn from the postal service is retiring the health benefits fun the amendment would only authorize o p m to pay the postal service a share of contributions for a health benefits out of the fund for three years those fiscal years of two thousand and nine two thousand and ten two thousand and eleven while the amendment is similar intent to h r twenty two as an original drafted by providing the postal service some degree of financial meme is is purposely written to make this really more of a short term relief by limiting it to only three years which also has the effect of reducing the overall projected cost of the bill paygo the point of the matter today is that h r twenty two is introduced presents a possible significant paygo issue which may prevent the bill from potentially seeing the light of day on the house floor unless we take the steps now to reduce the bill's fiscal impact i know many of us disagree with the preliminary an unofficial scoring approach that c b l has taken with age twenty two but the reality is that there is a score and that does  matter and to date we have not been able to find an offset for such a such scoring and by reducing the bill's applicable time period to three years we anticipate the bill's price tag will drop dramatically as well making it a bit more manageable going forward in terms of either finding an offset all for obtaining floor consideration of this legislation and short my friends the postal service is current financial predicament goes beyond grave at this point and time is of the essence so the amendment being offered to h r twenty two was designed only to allow the postal service to live to fight another day with the united the united understanding that much more work remains to be done by all including congress the administration the board of governors the p r c the employee groups and our postal unions as well as the mailing community i hope all members will support this amendment  ranking member mr chavis for five minutes for any comments he may have on this  i move that the subcommittee on federal workforce postal service in the district of columbia report h r twenty two as amended to the committee on oversight and government reform with the recommendation that the bill does pass the question is on a favorable reporting of well while we acknowledge that this has taken some time to get movement on this bill we wanted to make sure that what was put forth by the subcommittee had a reasonable chance of all timidly being enacted this is very important i'm glad that we have been able to make progress on the bill today and i look forward to working with each of our stakeholders to move this process forward over the next couple of weeks as we move to full committee and