What Congress Does – ‘Congress Comes Together… To Name Post Offices’
By the way, Republican Darrell Issa – he of countless hearings on Benghazi, IRS and AG Eric Holder – is the committee Chairman of all this post office naming……
WASHINGTON — ‘Over the past decade, 20 percent of the legislation Congress has passed has been to name post offices’.
‘The findings are contained in an April 26 report by the Congressional Research Service’.
‘In the current Congress, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee — where most post office naming acts originate — has adopted a policy stating that these pieces of legislation should not take up too much time’:
“The consideration of bills designating facilities of the United States Postal Service shall be conducted so as to minimize the time spent on such matters by the committee and the House of Representatives.”
‘The last Congress (112th), which was the most unproductive since at least the 1940s, even managed to move through 46 bills naming post offices, out of 240 total measures passed. (It also passed six bills regarding commemorative coins.)’
‘The numbers are especially striking when compared with those from previous sessions of Congress. According to an analysis compiled by Knight-Mozilla OpenNews Fellow Noah Veltman in January, in the 26 years before the 106th Congress (1999-2000), post office naming bills represented less than 5 percent of all the legislation signed into law’.
From : http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/29/congress-post-offices_n_3352711.html
I know the Constitution says that Congress should establish a Postal service, but I don’t think there is anything that requires them to rename specific post offices. I don’t see why the Postal Service can’t handle this challenge on their own.
But….but you’ll take away some Congressman being able to send out a press release/campaign memo saying they supported so and so being ‘honored’ by having a Post Office named for them.
A Post Office that may be closed due to screwing around with the Postal Services budgeting.