From: Paul Swartz <
Sent: Friday, September 11, 2009 4:06:48 PM
Subject:
House May Soon Vote On Modified HR 22
We are hearing the House of Representatives may debate and vote on a one-year, temporary fix to the Retiree Health Benefit Fund (RHBF) beginning next week, September 14, or shortly thereafter. While once again the temporary funding fix will be amended from the three-year bill approved in Committee and supported by the NRLCA, the amended one-year version of HR 22 forestalls, at least for now, the looming default on a $5.4 billion payment scheduled for September 30. The one-year amended version of H.R. 22 will still require the USPS to pre-fund the RHBF, however they would only be required to pay $1.4 billion of the $5.4 billion obligation currently in law.
The NRLCA will support the short-term fix, but also let Congress know the amended version of H.R. 22 does not resolve the underlying issue of the grossly unfair financial burden that has been placed on the Postal Service by the excessive annual payments now required to be made into the RHBF.
While we are not asking you to contact your Congressman, if you or any of your members in the state wish to write their Representatives asking them to support the amended version of H.R. 22, we encourage you to contact ONLY the 339 cosponsors of HR 22 to get them to vote in favor of the new bill. The co-sponsors of H.R. 22 can be found by clicking on the following link:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d111:22:./list/bss/d111HR.lst:@@@P
The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs passed similar legislation (S. 1507) with an anti-union amendment, which the NRLCA strongly opposes. There is still no word on when the Senate plans to advance similar legislation.
Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.
Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has..
