Postal Service in Rural Communities is McCaskill Focus at Senate Roundtable Discussion

Senator calls on colleagues and the Postal Service to make preservation of rural post offices a priority

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill today called on her colleagues and the U.S. Postal Service to make preservation of rural post offices and delivery standards a priority during a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee roundtable on the Postal Service in the digital age.

“As technology changes the way Americans communicate with one another, we can’t forget about the millions of people in rural America who rely on the Postal Service, both as a source of employment and a lifeline for communication and commerce,” said McCaskill who was born in Rolla, Mo. and is a senior member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “It’s critical that the U.S. Postal Service adapts to these changes without doing so on the backs of smaller and rural communities.”

McCaskill has led the charge to preserve rural post offices, preserve postal delivery standards, and enact urgently needed reforms to the Postal Service.

Most recently, McCaskill sent a letter to the Senate’s Financial Services Appropriations Subcommittee—which has jurisdiction over certain aspects of Postal Service financing—outlining a one-year moratorium on postal closings that would enable Congress to enact comprehensive postal reform, allowing the Postal Service to save jobs and continue to run efficiently in rural areas.

In December 2014, McCaskill, along with fellow Missouri Senator Roy Blunt and a bipartisan group of Senate colleagues, demanded a delay in the planned consolidation of up to 82 U.S. Postal Service mail processing facilities after the Inspector General found the Postal Service failed to fulfill its obligations to adequately study the impact of the consolidations, and failed to inform the public of those impacts. Those consolidations would affect 15,000 Postal Service jobs in 37 different states, including Missouri, as well as the millions of Americans who count on the reliability of the Postal Service. 

Visit mccaskill.senate.gov/rural to learn more about McCaskill's fight to protect rural Missouri.

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