This senator wants to hold up USPS reform: Florida's Senator Rick Scott.

7 March 2022

The Postal Service Reform Act—legislation to help fund and strengthen the USPS—is finally expected to receive a final vote on the floor of the Senate this week. But some Republicans are going all out to try to stop it.

Their leader: Florida's Senator Rick Scott.

Sen. Scott, who has been a longtime fan of Trump postmaster general Louis DeJoy, already pressured the Senate to delay this critical bill once, last month. When senators overcame that, Scott and several other Republicans began proposing poison-pill amendments that would make it very difficult to pass the larger bill itself.

When Donald Trump put Louis DeJoy—a shipping magnate heavily invested in USPS competitors—up for consideration, Sen. Scott called him “uniquely qualified.”2 Sen. Scott also had no objections to DeJoy’s ongoing effort to slow down the mail.3

Sen. Scott is pulling out all the stops to block the Postal Service Reform Act, objecting to the replacement of private health insurance for postal service retirees with Medicare—a move that would save the USPS $50 billion and be a big step toward making the institution solvent.4

In reality, Sen. Scott has a long history of doing exactly what DeJoy is trying to do—privatize social services. From hospitals to prisons, as governor of Florida, Sen. Scott worked to privatize public institutions. Now he’s trying to do the same to our post office.5,6,7

Sen. Scott and several of his Republican colleagues have piled on amendments to the bill, many of which could derail the act's effectiveness or undo the careful compromises created to get the bill this close to passage.8