Markup of USPS Retiree Benefits Bill

On July 21st at 1:30 pm, the House Federal Workforce, Postal Service and District of Columbia Subcommittee of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hold a mark-up of H.R. 5746, United States Postal Service's CSRS Obligation Modification Act of 2010.  

The subcommittee will mark up this bill at a meeting when it is marking up 4 other bills, three related to the District of Columbia and one related to supervisor training in small agencies.  

Assuming the subcommittee passes the bill, the next steps are as follows:

• Mark-up and passage by the full committee
• Committee report written
• Referral to the Rules committee to set the rules for floor debate
• Debate on the House floor
• Referral to the Senate where it will be reviewed by the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee and if unchanged  sent on to the full Senate
• The Senate then debates the bill which will likely require a 60 vote majority for passage;
• If the bill passes unchanged it becomes law otherwise;
•  the bill must pass through a conference committee and pass both Houses of Congress again.

Postal stakeholders who want to change the retiree obligation calculations during this session of Congress face the challenge of a limited number of legislative days available to handle new legislation, particularly in the Senate.   It would seem that even if the bill passes the House prior to the end of the fiscal year, it is likely that final passage will require action in a lame duck session.