The Scumbag Thirteen

Taxpayers got routed in the Senate on Wednesday when a $34 billion bailout of the U.S. Postal Service was approved on a vote of 62 to 37.

* THE RINO's WHO VOTED WITH THE DEMS...

Alexander (R-TN), Blunt (R-MO), Boozman (R-AR), Brown (R-MA), Cochran (R-MS), Collins (R-ME), Grassley (R-IA), Hoeven (R-ND), Moran (R-KS), Murkowski (R-AK), Roberts (R-KS), Snowe (R-ME), Wicker (R-MS)

The Postal Service is expected to lose as much as $12 billion this year [alone].

* BTW... THEY'VE BEEN BLEEDING MONEY FOR YEARS!

The postal unions were the big winners. They held off reforms that would have meant layoffs and benefit restructuring, at a minimum.

* OH... TO REITERATE:

The Postal Service is expected to lose as much as $12 billion this year [alone].

* OH... TO REITERATE:

* THEY'VE BEEN BLEEDING MONEY FOR YEARS!

Amazingly, even the postal management complained that the Senate bill "does not provide the Postal Service with the speed and flexibility it needs to achieve the $20 billion in cost reductions" that it must make in coming years.

Sen. John McCain said that "instead of the Senate dealing with the real problems such as 80% labor costs and consolidating the excess retail network of the Postal Service, the bill continues to allow 'no layoff' clauses in union contracts." It also locks in unsustainable mail service standards and makes it more difficult for the Postal Service to close and consolidate post offices. Reforms like eliminating Saturday delivery were scuttled.

* TO REITERATE:

Alexander (R-TN), Blunt (R-MO), Boozman (R-AR), Brown (R-MA), Cochran (R-MS), Collins (R-ME), Grassley (R-IA), Hoeven (R-ND), Moran (R-KS), Murkowski (R-AK), Roberts (R-KS), Snowe (R-ME), Wicker (R-MS) all voted with the Democrats.

"It's an anti-reform bill," insists Darrell Issa, the Republican chairman of the House Government Reform Committee. "It's unacceptable and it was worse than doing nothing," he tells me. Part of the $34 billion of debt relief paid for by the Treasury is due to what the USPS has said is years of overpayment into the federal retirement system. Mr. Issa's committee says that the Postal Service owes the Treasury closer to $50 billion.

The Senate bailout will never make it through the House, vows Mr. Issa. He wants a commission created to recommend some 3,000 post office closures and a financial oversight board to protect taxpayers from further losses.

But the [Democrat-controlled] Senate voted for the Postal Service to keep on doing what it's doing, which means up to $200 billion in losses over the next decade.

This could be the first of many postal bailouts to come.