McCain amendment would make postal workers pay more for health insurance:

from postalnews blog

US Postal Service employees pay less for their health and life insurance than other federal workers. While other employees have 72% of their health premiums paid for by the government, the postal service pays 79% of the premium for its employees. Postal executives pay nothing for health insurance.

An amendment introduced by Senator John McCain would change that, requiring the USPS not to exceed the percentage contribution paid for other federal workers. The amendment would be enforced by depriving the USPS of its borrowing authority in any fiscal year that it fails to comply:

TEXT OF AMENDMENT

SA 251. Mr. McCAIN submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by him to the bill S. 493, to reauthorize and improve the SBIR and STTR programs, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:
At the end of the bill, add the following:
SEC. ___. LIMITATION ON POSTAL SERVICE CONTRIBUTIONS FOR LIFE INSURANCE AND HEALTH INSURANCE BENEFITS.
(a) In General.—If the Postmaster General does not submit a certification described under subsection (b) to Congress before fiscal year 2012 and each fiscal year thereafter—
(1) no sums may be appropriated from the United States Treasury to the United States Postal Service with respect to that fiscal year; and
(2) notwithstanding section 2005(a) of title 39, United States Code, the United States Postal Service may not borrow any money under that section with respect to that fiscal year.
(b) Certification.—A certification referred to under subsection (a) is a certification that, with respect to the applicable fiscal year, the contributions by the United States Postal Service for employees for—
(1) life insurance benefits shall not exceed the maximum contribution provided for under section 8708 of title 5, United States Code; and
(2) health insurance benefits shall not exceed the maximum contribution provided for under section 8906 of title 5, United States Code.

What McCain, who knows better, ignores is:

Postal employees don’t get Locality Pay, like FEDERAL employee (almost 30% in Metro [DC] Areas) and in DC federal employees get $100+ every month to take the Metro to work. They also don’t get random federal holidays as announced by the President, any of those snow days the other agencies get off when their areas gets hit with snow. Nor does he offer to increase his own $0 premiums, or extend the retirement requirement for Congress to a minimum of 20 years like Postal Worker.      GlennDL