Single, Unique Zip Codes for Certain Communities

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentlewoman from Colorado (Ms. Boebert), my friend, for bringing forward H.R. 8753.

This bill would require the U.S. Postal Service to designate unique ZIP Codes for more than 50 different communities across America. The legislation actually combines multiple bills that have been introduced in this Congress by both Republicans and Democrats that aim to address specific community concerns expressed over a long period of time about disrupted mail delivery, undeliverable and lost mail, and geographic confusion.

I commend Representative Boebert for her very creative and undaunted work on this issue, which has been a chronic headache for residents of dozens of small communities across the land.

For example, Scotland, Connecticut, is a municipality with only 600 addresses, and it is broken up into six different ZIP Codes. The town has reported multiple instances of disruptions in mail delivery, including absentee ballots in recent elections. The town has already sought the assistance of the Postal Service, which operates a ZIP Code Boundary Review Process, and even sent an appeal after their initial petition was denied.

The process has been protracted and a tough task for them, as well as for other communities covered by Ms. Boebert's legislation. The distinguished gentlewoman's bill operates as a last resort for towns to get the resources and the attention that they deserve.

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to support this legislation. Congress has designated new ZIP Codes via legislation in the past. I found the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, enacted in 2006, required the designation of unique ZIP Codes for four different towns. This one is far more comprehensive.

Mr. Speaker, we are delighted to endorse the legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. RASKIN.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Graves) for his very thoughtful and insightful remarks on this. We had the Postmaster General with us yesterday in the Oversight Committee, and we are facing a crisis in lots of parts of the country in terms of undelivered mail, late mail, and inefficient delivery taking place. In the meantime, the costs are going up and up.

There is a lot of work that needs to be done in the post office. The post office is really the only Federal department that is defined by the Constitution itself. It is in Article I of the Constitution. The post office created the national transportation network, the postal roads. It created the national information network. Benjamin Franklin was the first Postmaster General.

We have got to bring the post office back to a point where we can rely on it to do the basic things that are so essential to our economy and to our society, and one of them is lining up the ZIP Codes properly.

Again, I thank the distinguished gentlewoman from Colorado for her initiative, which is truly bipartisan, to loop together all of the communities that have been very frustrated and disappointed in this process to say that Congress will, indeed, act.

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Mr. RASKIN. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time for closing.

Madam Speaker, I understand we have a few moments before our friends arrive for the next discussion.

I, again, commend the distinguished and passionate gentlewoman from Colorado for her really creative work on this legislation.

I know it means a lot to thousands and thousands of people across the country. It is going to make people's lives a lot simpler. The post office should be something that facilitates our work in small business, our work sending out bills or checks and receiving them, and the post office should not be something that gets in the way.

This legislation will definitely ameliorate a problem that exists, and we hope it will facilitate life, commerce, and social action taking place in lots of parts of the country.

This also gives me the opportunity to thank my colleague for engaging in this legislative endeavor in a totally bipartisan way. We live in a time where partisan feelings are intense and ferocious and, of course, that is not historically novel.

There have been partisan tempers flaring basically since the Federalists and the Democratic Republicans went at it in the election of the 1800s. I suppose George Washington was the last President who actually won a unanimous verdict in the electoral college. He got all the electoral college votes. Everybody loved Washington.

After that, we formed political parties. There is nothing evil about political parties. The alternative of having political parties, I suppose, is a one-party system something like is developed in China with the Communist Party there or in Russia under Vladimir Putin or what Orban is working on with illiberal democracy in Hungary.

There is an easy way to get rid of partisanship if partisanship is the problem and that is you get rid of political parties. We can't do that because political parties are a sign of health in a society because people have different views about things and political parties are a great way to articulate different agendas and programs, bring them to the electorate, bring them to the voters, and to express conflict in a civil and nonviolent way.

The problem, of course, is when we elevate our devotion to party above our devotion to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in the country as a whole. All of us who aspire and attained a public office are nothing but the servants of the people, all the people.

We might get elected with a little ``R'' next to our name or a ``D'' next to our name or an ``I'' next to our name, but once we swear our oath of office, we are there to uphold the Constitution for everyone and we are there to serve all of the people. That is our job.

If you say that sounds romantic or that sounds idealistic, actually, that is how we conduct most of our lives as politicians. If you come to my district office out in beautiful Rockville, Maryland, in the beautiful Eighth Congressional District, and you have a problem, let's say, with Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid or the post office or PPP loans, whatever it is, we will go to bat for you. We will go to work for you to help you navigate the twists and turns of the public system and Federal bureaucracy.

We never ask, are you a Democrat? Are you a Republican? Are you an Independent? If you are my constituent, we will go to bat for you. I know that is true of my friend from Colorado, too. She is there to serve everybody: Republicans, Democrats, Independents, others, and people who hate all the political parties.

All of those people are Americans and deserve the programs and the services of the government at the very least and certainly all of the rights and the freedoms that they are entitled to as Americans under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We have the honor and the privilege to serve the people, to serve all America, and to serve the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

We are not the masters of the people. Anybody who occupies public office, no matter how high or how low, is nothing but a servant of the people. That is why the Founders created a system where if people begin to act like kings and queens and lords over the people, that is when we throw them out through elections or we evict, we eject, we reject, we impeach, we convict if we have to do that, but the Constitution has an electoral system to keep the process moving.

All of us are just servants of the people. Just like we are there to serve the people, the Federal departments we set up, like the post office, which I think still, even with all of the problems, is our most popular Federal function. With hundreds of thousands of hardworking, devoted people working in the post office, all of them work for the government, work for the Congress, which works for the people.

The three most important words in our Constitution are the three most important words in our country, we the people, and we reject every form of despotism and dictatorship and anybody who would try to overthrow rule by the people.

In this bill, which may be deceptively simple and may apply only to tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people in the country, what we see is a democratic representative government in action. When we are trying to live up to our oaths, we can act in a bipartisan way. We can remember where the word ``party'' comes from. It comes from the French word ``partie'', which means a part. Each of our parties is nothing but a part of the whole.

When we are doing our jobs right, as Ms. Boebert is today, then we are acting in the interest of the whole without regard to political party or sect. I am proud to be a part of this legislation, I am proud to support it, and I am very hopeful that our friends in the Senate will pick it up quickly and we can move it through this Congress.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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