Biden and the Democrats are getting things done
While much of the media’s focus these days has been on Ukraine and Russia, the Senate where Democrats maintain a razor thin majority under Chuck Schumer has largely been out of the spotlight. Even still, they’ve had a significant week already with two major bipartisan accomplishments.
The first is the anti-lynching bill named for Emmett Till, which makes lynching a federal crime – a long overdue piece of legislation that stalled in the Senate for nearly a decade but is now finally headed to President Biden’s desk for his signature. The second is a bill to save the U.S. Postal Service which passed overwhelmingly in the Senate by a vote of 79-19. This is despite the best efforts of Republican Sen. Rick Scott trying to delay the bill for three weeks.
This was an overdue piece of legislation as well – nearly 15 years in the making and accomplishes two major goals – removing a pension pre-funding requirement left over from the Bush administration that has been slowly bankrupting the USPS for years, allowing it to accrue massive debt, and was always the endgame of Trump appointee Louis DeJoy and it also requires USPS to offer delivery six days a week – one of the cuts being proposed by DeJoy that would slow down mail delivery significantly.
While removing DeJoy from his post is a difficult task that neither President Biden nor the Senate are able to do on their own, the damage he has wrought to the USPS can now be curbed.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making