The House of Representatives has passed the $34.2 billion Treasury, Postal and General Government bill (HR-5120) that allocates just a shade over $60 million for the U.S. Postal Service.
The House approved the bill by a vote of 308 to 121, with five members not voting, after several hours of debate on a number of amendments that were unrelated to the USPS.
Some of the amendments were adopted, while others were rejected.
One of the approved amendments would prohibit the importing of municipal solid waste from Canada, while another would prohibit the government from spending money to enforce its restrictions on travel to Cuba.
Yet another amendment would prohibit the government from “using numerical quotas, targets and goals” for outsourcing federal jobs to private contractors.
The postal service appropriation in the adopted version of the bill is significantly less than the $107.6 million that the House Appropriations Committee recommended, and $36 million less than the USPS received last year.
At the same time, the sum is identical to the amount contained in the Senate’s version of the Treasury, Postal and General Government Appropriations bill (S-2740). The Senate is expected to vote on that bill by the end of next week.
The allocation also includes $29 million towards the $1.2 billion Congress owes the USPS for shortfalls over the years in allocations under the old The Revenue Foregone Act. When the act was repealed in 1993, Congress agreed to make up the shortfall at the rate of $29 million over 42 years.
Immediately after the vote, House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle (R-IA) criticized its passage, saying that while it “technically remains within its allocations, it exceeds the President’s request by $537 million.”
He called for fiscal restraint “in the less controversial measures” like this bill saying that “for every dollar we increase spending over the President’s request in one bill, we’ll have to find an equal amount of savings in later appropriations bills.”
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