Six months ago, I traveled to the California Postal Legislative Coalition and issued a clear warning that congressional and White House attacks on postal benefits and the Postal Service were imminent. Indeed, a few days after the conference, House leadership zeroed in on the postal and federal workforce.
Throughout the past half-year, NAPS’ communications with its members have been consistent—engage with and persuade policymakers to reject proposed cuts. To their credit, NAPS members have been aggressive and effective legislative advocates. This activism was successful and must continue. There were those who counseled and practiced restraint, suggesting the House Budget Committee’s early-February budget framework—which proposed significant cuts to the pay and benefits of the postal and federal workforce—merely was a “framework.” However, seasoned legislative professionals knew full-well the outline would be the foundation of the effort to underwrite massive tax cuts, increased border security and immigration control funding and a surge in military spending. NAPS was one of the few organizations that, early on, activated a major, online, legislative advocacy campaign to reject the budget framework. The campaign was complemented by NAPS’ timely legislative conference in early April.
NAPS was not misled by those who counseled restraint. NAPS refused to stand by and simply “monitor” the situation while its members were being targeted by those seeking to demonize postal and federal employees.
Concurrent with the call for benefits cuts was the White House’s loud drumbeat promoting postal privatization and Postal Service submission to another federal agency. NAPS voiced full-throated declarations opposing these dual plots to dismantle the Postal Service. Moreover, we aligned with the postal unions to rally opposition to postal privatization and postal surrender. Indeed, the unions reciprocated by participating in our April rally in front of the U.S. Capitol. Timely NAPS political activism helped generate enough congressional resistance to the anti-postal employee provisions in H.R. 1, the Budget Reconciliation Act, that none of those direct threats remained in the bill at the time it reached the president for his signature on July 4.
Also, NAPS was one of the first groups to recognize that several House-passed provisions targeting postal employees violated the Senate’s “Byrd Rule,” a parliamentary decree that limits the scope of provisions included in a reconciliation bill. Moreover, NAPS pointed out that the increased FERS contribution assessed to newly hired or promoted EAS-level postal employees would have increased the federal deficit by $111 million. Also, the subsequent Senate language that would have expanded the FERS assessment to all newly hired postal employees would have increased the deficit by more than $1 billion. In late June, when Senate leadership unveiled its second-to-last and, subsequently, its penultimate version of H.R. 1, NAPS inundated key members of the House and Senate and their staff members with phone calls, emails and text messages—day and night, weekday and weekend. Of course, we also met with them in person, but not at night or during the weekend. In those communications and meetings, we explained that the proposals to cut postal supervisor, manager and postmaster pay; charge EAS-level postal employees a fee for exercising their due-process rights; and require the USPS to abandon vehicle modernization and its electric vehicle fleet would devastate NAPS members, harm the Postal Service and violate the Byrd Rule.
It is noteworthy that the House passed H.R. 1 on May 22 by a single vote. On July 1, the Senate’s revised version of H.R. 1 needed the vice president to break a 50-50 tie to pass the legislation. And on July 3, when the Senate-passed version returned to the House for final consideration, it squeaked by with a four-vote majority. During each step in the legislative process, a succession of anti-postal provisions were dumped. Nevertheless, the president signed into law a highly controversial and partisan bill that certainly will lead to further risks to postal and federal employees. Removal of the provisions to which NAPS objected bought time. Noted economists and the Congressional Budget Office have warned that H.R. 1 will increase the federal deficit by $3.4 trillion over the next decade—a gap as wide as the Grand Canyon and as deep as the Mariana Trench. In the near and long terms, Congress and the administration will be seeking legislative ways to reduce this self-created deficit. In fact, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) declared he is contemplating another reconciliation bill. NAPS already is planning for it. While H.R. 1 was working its way through the Senate, the House Government Operations Subcommittee conducted a June 24 hearing on the U.S. Postal Service’s future. NAPS Executive Vice President Chuck Mulidore submitted testimony on behalf of the 47,000 postal supervisors, managers and postmasters represented by NAPS. The congressional panel heard from representatives of two mailer groups, three “academics” and the NALC.
