The plan to privatize 29 correctional facilities across 18 counties in South Florida was introduced by state legislators as an amendment to a budget bill, which, according to Thursday’s ruling, didn’t allow for full consideration of the costs of the planned mass privatization. GEO Group and the Corrections Corporation of America were set to see a steep windfall from the privatization deals but lobbying records show the companies invested in lawmakers long before these lucrative contracts were penned.

GEO Group, the second-largest private prison operator in the country, is headquartered in Florida and is already running the state’s largest private prison, the Blackwater River Correctional Facility in Milton. When the Corrections Corporation of America builds the largest private immigration center in the country, as it agreed with the town of Pembroke Pines and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to do earlier this year, Florida will become ground zero for private prisons.

The situation in Florida isn’t unique, but advocates say the scale of Florida’s plan is remarkable.

“It’s precedent setting,” said Ken Kopczynski, executive director of the Private Corrections Working Group, a website that collects news and resources on the growing influence of the private prison industry.

Community protests planned CCA immigration center. (Photo courtesy of Gail Tyree)

Kopczynski said proposed budget amendment and the planned Immigration and Customs Enforcement-contracted center “is the largest privatization effort in the U.S. if not in the world.”

The private-prison industry, like many others service-based private companies, relies on the goodwill of legislators. Campaign finance rules in Florida place a limit on how much companies can give to any individual state legislator, so companies often give to a party instead, said Nicole Porter, state advocacy coordinator for the Justice Center.

GEO Group, conceived in 1954, is a significant donor to the Republican Party of Florida, according to information from the Florida Department of State; in 2010, GEO Group donated $575,000, and through the first two quarters of 2011, they gave $160,000 total.

This often means if donations trickle down to an individual candidate, there is little record, said Porter. Gov. Rick Scott and Senate President Mike Haridopolos, the most vocal proponents of the privatization bill, have no record of funding from GEO Group in their campaign disclosure statements from the last three years.

Porter says considering the political donations of GEO Group, the “assumptions around efficiency and cost management” in private prisons “is problematic particularly when you are talking about policies that impact the real lives of people.”

Community protests planned CCA immigration center. (Photo courtesy of Gail Tyree)

The planned privatization would have impacted one-fifth of Florida’s prison population, and investigations have shown private prisons often cut costs at the expense of prisoner safety.

In fact, GEO Group is already under investigation for a pay-for-play scandal involving Blackwater River Correctional Facility in Florida. An FBI subpeona calls for, among othe rthings, the travel vouchers of a former Florida speaker of the house, Rep. Ray Sansom, according to legal documents obtained by DBA Press. Sansom resigned amid an ethics investigation in Feburary 2010.

Prominent lawmakers on the national stage, including Sen. Marco Rubio, have been tarred with the same brush - Sansom was Rubio’s budget chief when he allegedly inserted language creating Blackwater into a Florida budget bill.

On the congressional level, six of the top twenty recipients of private-prison cash are from Florida, more than any other state.

Rubio was the largest recipient of funds from GEO Group and its subsidiaries — he received $27,400 between 2009 and 2010, according to Open Secrets.

U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and U.S. Reps. David Rivera, Vern Buchanan, Sandy Adams and Allen West all received between $18,950 and $5,500 dollars from GEO Group or CCA.

CCA, in operation since 1983, “always thinks 3-5 years ahead,” said Kopczynski, “anticipating they will get a contract,” and their political donations reflect this.

Contributions aside, one of Gov. Scott’s top transition budget advisers, Donna Arduin, is a former trustee of a GEO Group real-estate company called Correctional Properties Trust.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters brought an ethics complaint against the prison privatization measure, arguing that the Scott’s support for the bill faces a conflict of interest because as governor, he oversees both the state Department of Corrections and a state investment fund that has stock in private prison companies, according to the Florida News Service.

Grassroots groups have continued to voice their opposition to pay-for-play private prison contracts and private detention centers in their communities, as The Florida Independent has reported, and they hope shining light on the issues is the first step to increasing accountability and culpability in prison privatization.

“The private prison industry for as long as I have been doing this work has always worked undercover,” said Gail Tyree, a fellow at the Open Society Foundation working to bring together a coalition of organizations to oppose prison privatization.

“They’re always saying you don’t stand a chance, but I believe that you stand a chance to stop the project until the last brick is in the building.”

Community protests planned CCA immigration center. (Photo courtesy of Gail Tyree)

A Wednesday vote by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee to approve the “Legal Workforce Act,” which would mandate the use of the immigration enforcement E-Verify program, has prompted mixed reactions among conservative and industry groups.

The bill — sponsored by Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, and cosponsored by Florida GOP Reps. Jeff Miller, Dennis Ross, Allen West and C.W. Bill Young — would require all U.S. employers to use E-Verify, the electronic federal database, to verify if an employee is authorized to work in the U.S. It will now move to the House floor.

The International Business Times states that Smith’s bill has “has set up a clash between two Republican doctrines: cracking down on illegal immigration versus opposing regulations that could dampen hiring and constrain small business owners.”

The Packer — the “fresh fruit and vegetable industry’s leading source for news, information and analysis” — quoted Monte Lake, a Washington-based agriculture lobbyist and attorney:

We are on the advent of potential mandatory E-Verify rules. Congress is incapable of getting ahead of difficult topics like immigration and apparently needed a train wreck to justify coming up with a solution to a difficult solution. That’s what we have concluded because they have not really paid attention to us and mustered the political will to solve the problem.

In another article The Packer added that “any pretense that the Legal Workforce Act would accommodate the needs of agriculture was dissolved with the votes of the House Judiciary Committee Sept. 21.”

The article continued:

“If the (Legal Workforce Act) should pass the House without a mitigation for agriculture, domestic agriculture is in serious trouble,” said Frank Gasperini, executive vice president of the Washington, D.C.-based National Council of Agricultural Employers.

In a member alert, the Washington, D.C.-based United Fresh Produce Association said the Legal Workforce Act doesn’t address the needs of agriculture.

“Without an ag worker program, this legislation threatens the viability of fruit and vegetable growers across the country, with significant impact on the entire fresh produce marketing chain,” the United Fresh alert said.

The Wall Street Journal has said that E-Verify “doesn’t appear very good at identifying illegal workers, would likely bar huge numbers of legal Americans from taking a job thanks to all the false positives the database throws out, and would just push undocumented workers into the informal economy where they’d pay fewer taxes.”

Opponents of the Smith bill have pointed out that they do not propose eliminating an employee verification program, but say businesses need one that works well for employers — especially small companies — and workers.

Analysts and business organizations have argued that E-Verify alone would hurt Florida and the U.S. economy, but those same organizations say that a program that allows employers to verify a worker’s immigration status must be part of federal immigration reform.

Numbers USA, which supports an “attrition through enforcement” immigration policy and wants “lower immigration levels,” called Wednesday’s vote a “victory.”

The majority of sugar cane might be grown in South Florida, but the industry’s political reach extends far beyond the state.

Legend has it that then-President Bill Clinton even interrupted his breakup with Monica Lewinsky to take a call from one of Big Sugar’s top dogs — Alfonso “Alfy” Fanjul. Fanjul and others in his family own Flo-Sun, based in West Palm Beach. The company, along with U.S. Sugar Corp. (headquartered in Clewiston), are the two largest producers of raw cane sugar in the country.

Flo-Sun — through subsidiaries such as Florida Crystals, Domino Foods Inc. and C&H Sugar Company — also has milling and refining operations around the world, with a global production capacity of about 7 million tons of sugar per year. U.S. Sugar’s refined production is less than 1 million, but its subsidiary Southern Gardens Citrus is one of the largest suppliers of not-from-concentrate orange juice in the United States.

As one of Florida’s top agricultural commodities, sugar has a lot to lose from regulations and a lot to gain from agricultural legislation. So the top companies spread campaign donations fairly evenly between Republicans and Democrats across the country, and are often rewarded with support.

During the 2010 cycle, U.S. Sugar donated $12,400 to then-Rep. Allen Boyd, while PACs and individuals working with Flo-Sun gave $16,000 and American Crystal Sugar gave $10,000. Sugar companies have also given heavily to Reps. Dennis Ross, R-Lakeland, and Tom Rooney, R-Stuart. Ross’ second-largest contributor has been Flo-Sun; individuals working for the company donated at least $13,000 to his campaigns since 2009.

It is no surprise, then, that Boyd (before losing his 2010 reelection bid), Ross and Rooney have all crusaded against environmental regulations. The three have been especially vocal about the EPA’s “numeric nutrient criteria,” which could potentially affect agricultural interests including sugar, whose nutrient-laden effluent often makes its way into state waterways, causing noxious algal blooms and fish kills.

According to OpenSecrets, Big Sugar gave more than $4.2 million to federal candidates and party committees during the 2008 election cycle alone, 63 percent of which went to Democrats.

Companies with ties to Florida Crystals (which has contributed nearly $4.5 million to campaigns since 1991) gave at least $100,000 to now-Gov. Rick Scott’s gubernatorial campaign. The head of Florida Crystals also hosted a large campaign fundraiser for Scott only four weeks after he blasted the company’s rival — U.S. Sugar — over its role in a planned Everglades restoration project.

Adam Putnam, meanwhile, was one of the group’s largest recipients in 2002, when he was running for reelection as a congressman. Big Sugar donated at least $61,000 to Putnam’s successful 2010 campaign to become the Florida agriculture commissioner. Shortly after taking office, Putnam sought to delay a ban on sugary drinks in Florida public schools.

The lobbying arm of U.S. Sugar is enormously powerful. In 2009, crop producers spent more than $20.5 million on federal lobbying. The American Sugar Alliance, which represents both the Sugar Cane Growers Cooperative of Florida and the Florida Sugar Cane League, was responsible for $1.3 million of that sum.

In 2011 so far, Flo-Sun has spent at least $345,000 on lobbying, while U.S. Sugar has spent $80,000.

“We have been blessed in that the support for farm policies and sugar policies has not been a partisan issue,” says Phillip Hayes, director of media relations for the American Sugar Alliance, which includes Florida Crystals. “When you talk to Republicans and Democrats, the vast majority of people in Congress support U.S. sugar policy. They recognize that you can walk into any coffee shop and pick up free packets of sugar. We have an ample supply of inexpensive sugar, and most of it is homegrown and most members of Congress want to hang on to that success story.”

“We have been in litigation on the flipside of United States Sugar most of the time over the past 20 years, maybe a little more,” says David Guest, an attorney with the environmental law firm Earthjustice. “So we are intimately familiar with the sugar companies. We know how they work.”

Guest says that Big Sugar operates differently than most agricultural industries — trading cash in the form of campaign donations for political favors in the form of subsidies. If the companies gain enough legislative support, they can ensure that agricultural legislation is written to their specifications, keeping sugar prices and subsidies high.

“They are unlike any other industry in Florida in that they aren’t in the agricultural business, they are in the corporate welfare business,” says Guest. “They get massive amounts of free services with hundreds of millions of dollars. There is a legal requirement imposed where consumers pay extra for their products … and when those programs were being reviewed and repealed in years past, it was sugar only that managed to escape the repeal.”

With its heavy contributions to congressional campaigns, sugar interests have proven skilled at getting their way — especially when it comes to the most important piece of legislation affecting the industry, the U.S. Farm Bill.

This comprehensive bill, which is passed every five years or so by Congress, usually amends or repeals certain provisions of preceding agricultural acts. For Big Sugar, this often translates into lavish subsidies that some theorize they’d go bankrupt without.

The next Farm Bill will be voted on in 2012, and it might look different than in years past. But Big Sugar isn’t worried.

“The whole process is the great unknown. We don’t know what the bill will look like,” says Hayes. “But there will be some reductions. Specifically with sugar, though, sugar is in a pretty good situation. … Sugar has operated at no cost to taxpayers since 2002 and we project that it will remain that way till at least 2021.”

As Hayes points out, federal legislation calls for the sugar program to be operated on a no-cost basis. But it’s costing someone: namely, candy companies that would prefer that the cost of sugar be lowered. The U.S. is mandated to import sugar from 41 countries across the globe, 38 of which are developing, but the government restricts those imports through a series of quotas — pushing U.S. sugar prices to between two and three times the global market rate.

As a result, a handful of sugar producers pocket around $1 billion a year in excess profits. A portion of that revenue is eventually placed back into the political system, a win for both Big Sugar and lawmakers across the country.

Without the high costs brought on by sugar policy, U.S. sugar companies argue they could lose their market share to Brazil, Australia or Thailand. Extensive lobbying and campaign contributions are merely insurance for companies Guest calls the “corporate welfare kings” of America.

Sugar isn’t explicit about its lobbying efforts, but it makes sure to cite the importance of “education.”

“Sugar always works to educate members of Congress about the benefits to sugar policy,” says Hayes. “What we like to say is that sugar policy is clearly working for everyone it touches.”

This report was produced as part of a collaborative investigative effort to expose the influence of corporate money on the political process by members of The Media Consortium, in partnership with the We the People Campaign. To read more stories from this series, visit CampaignCash.org or follow #CampaignCash on Twitter.

Ross has long been vocal in his opposition of the EPA-mandated “numeric nutrient criteria,” a set of standards that would govern water pollution in Florida.

Saying they are based on “junk science,” Ross argued that the criteria would have a deliterous impact on Floridians. “The EPA is going wild, and is not relying on genuine science or logic and reason in its implementation of its regulations,” Ross said. Shortly after, Ross said the EPA is hampering the fishing industry in Florida. “They [the fishing industry] can do a very good job making sure they’re policing it the way it ought to be policed because their livelihoods depend on it,” he said.

Supporters of the criteria argue that the rules would help, rather than hinder, the fishing industry. Nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen (which are present in both industry effluent and home fertilizers) lead to large scale algal blooms in state waterways, cutting off oxygen to marine supply and killing fish — a major problem for those hoping to catch them.

Attacks on the EPA are nothing new, especially attacks originating from the right. As we have noted has been noted, however, the numeric nutrient criteria were actually mandated by the Bush Administration, not President Obama.

Watch the full video:

According to his press release, Ross’ conversation with Jackson centered mostly on the federally mandated numeric nutrient criteria and the future of radiation flyovers.

The nutrient criteria were mandated by the EPA after a lawsuit brought by several environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and the St. Johns Riverkeeper, due to Florida’s failure to meet requirements of the Clean Water Act. Ross said the implementation of the criteria was akin to “bowing to a lawsuit by a radical environmental group” and was “unacceptable.”

Ross also lashed out at the agency for conducting radiation monitoring at mining sites in Central Florida. “I made clear that decades of study, from industry to University, show that radiation levels at mining sites in central Florida contain less radiation than living in the suburbs of Denver, and that any radiation monitoring must be done with agreed upon benchmarks based on accepted scientific standards,” Ross said.

“EPAs commitment to conduct no future radiation flyovers was a giant step in the right direction,” Ross said about commitments made by Jackson at the meeting. ”The commitment to transparency with all parties when it comes to the data collected will also benefit all the parties involved. In addition, EPAs commitment to work with industry, from Agriculture to Phosphate, as well as with the Florida DEP, is something I believe will alleviate many of EPAs concerns.”

According to his Twitter account, Ross will be meeting with EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson today, one-on-one. Jackson has been criticized for her role as the head of the agency now often deemed a “job killer” and has been especially scrutinized for her role in a set of numeric nutrient criteria that are mandated for the state of Florida. The criteria would place more stringent limitations on nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen, which are often found in industry effluent and are largely responsible for the growth of harmful algal blooms and fish kills.

The numeric nutrient criteria were actually mandated under the Bush administration and came about as a result of Florida’s failure to meet requirements of the Clean Water Act. Critics of the criteria often mistakenly argue that they are a result of the Obama administration, and that they are based on “bad science.”

During a January subcommittee meeting, Ross said that the regulatory risk that exists is “almost not manageable” and would cost millions to the phosphate, property and agriculture industries. Ross failed to mention the cost that water pollution poses to the fishing, tourism or waterfront real estate.

In a June press release, Ross said that the EPA needed to “take the plunge and end numeric nutrient nonsense” and that Floridians can take care of their own water. “Water is Florida’s lifeblood and no one knows how to take care of that lifeblood better than Floridians,” said Ross. “We welcome anyone from EPA to Florida – as a tourist.”

The USPS pegs projected losses over the next ten years at a colossal $238 billion, based on ongoing precipitous declines in first-class mail use. Both industry insiders and government officials, however, say that number is ludicrously inflated.

Ruth Goldway, chair of the Postal Regulatory Commission, an oversight agency that acts as a middleman between the Postal Service and the federal government at large, called it an “unsubstantiated figure with no basis in reality.”

Phil Dine, a spokesman for the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), which represents more than 90 percent of all letter carriers, tells The American Independent, “Nobody takes that seriously.” Both called the number a scare tactic that USPS management is using to jolt Congress to rush into reforms.

The numbers from the last several years seem to back up what Goldway and Dine say. Getting to $238 billion in losses by the start of the next decade would require the absolute worst annual loss the Postal Service has suffered in recent years to more than triple, then stay that high for the entire decade. Yet overall mail volume is actually increasing (though first-class mail is still far below pre-Internet-Revolution levels) as the country gradually claws its way out the recession, making such a scenario beyond unlikely.

Still, even if it’s not to the tune of $238 billion, there’s no denying that the Postal Service is in trouble. It ended 2010 with a net operating loss of $8.5 billion, marking the fourth straight year — and the worst of them yet — that the USPS has ended up in the red. But industry insiders say these grim numbers — the source of anti-labor grousing from the likes of Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.) — leave out a crucial part of the complete picture, a piece that completely flips the narrative on the dire straits the Postal Service allegedly faces.

A retirement deal struck

The roots of the issue go back 40 years. In 1971, the federal government authorized a complete overhaul of the postal system. It replaced the nearly 200-year-old Post Office Department with the U.S. Postal Service, which has delivered the mail ever since. The main difference between the two, though the changeover may have been little noticed by the public, is that the Post Office Department was a Cabinet-level department of the federal government and, as such, was funded with federal money. The Postal Service is a federal agency in a much looser sense and operates entirely on revenue generated by consumer purchases.

At the time of the changeover, the new Postal Service struck a deal with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the federal agency that oversees all federal civil service programs (such as the old Post Office Department). For those postal workers who began their careers before 1971, the OPM would use federal funds to contribute to pension plans at a rate based on 1971-level earnings, without adjustments for inflation or post-‘71 pay raises. The USPS agreed to keep using the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS), the pension system for all federal employees, for simplicity’s sake.

Over the next several decades, inflation rose and postal worker salaries grew, from an average of under $10,000 annually at the time of reorganization to over $50,000 today (PDF). As a result, the USPS has contributed an increasingly disproportionate part of pension costs to the CSRS each year since 1971.

‘Pre-funding the grandkids of people who haven’t been born yet’

By 2003, the Postal Service began lobbying Congress to do something to reform the system and reduce its pension obligation. Instead, in 2006, Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which, among other things, required the Postal Service to fund 75 years’ worth of retiree health benefits over ten years. Of this singular requirement, the NALC’s Phil Dine says, “It’s pre-funding the grandkids of people who haven’t been born yet. No other organization, public or private, has to do anything like that.”

And that, to bring it all full circle, is where the budget shortfalls come in, according to postal worker union representatives, as well as the Postal Service itself. Each year, September 30 (the end of the fiscal year) hits, and the Postal Service has to dump $5.5 billion into its Retiree Health Benefit Fund. Without that requirement, the Postal Service’s annual profits could have reached as high as $3.3 billion in recent years. Of course, the $8.5 billion loss last year still leaves $3 billion in red ink even after discounting the retiree fund money, but Jim Sauber, head economist and chief of staff for the NALC, contends that even that shortfall is simply the result of a “non-cash” adjustment to the USPS workers’ compensation fund, following tumbling interest rates.

The short end of the stick

Indeed, though the recession and the rise of online communication have put an undeniable damper on mail in general, Dine reports that the latest figures have the USPS making $226 million in net profit in the first quarter of this year — a trend that should continue, at least until September 30 comes around. Even when offset by the hit the Postal Service takes from that non-cash workers’ comp adjustment based on slashed interest rates, Dine says that the USPS would have made $837 million since 2007, were it not for the pre-funding requirement.

Still, despite the singularity of the requirement, the NALC argues that the Postal Service does have the money to remain afloat, if it were simply allowed to use it. Those disproportionate pension contributions? According to external audits performed by consultants from the Segal Company and the Hay Group, the Postal Service has put anywhere between $50 and $75 billion extra into the CSRS since 1971.

The USPS would like to use that money to cover its retirement obligations, but the Office of Personnel Management controls the funds, and recognizing the overage would mean making up the difference itself. “We’re happy to pay our fair share,” says the NALC Chief of Staff Sauber. “We just don’t want to get the short end of the stick, which is what we’ve gotten from OPM.”

Even the OPM concedes that it’s not unreasonable for the Postal Service to seek a re-evaluation of how pension contributions are tabulated. “[In 2003], the Postal Service proposed that the obligations for pre-1971 service be calculated on the basis of a simple years-of-service approach,” OPM planning director John O’Brien told the House Oversight Committee at a hearing last year. “Other than one technical flaw [a quibble over annuity growth], this is not an inconceivable approach. While it may be worthy of future consideration by the Congress, OPM believes that it is not possible based upon current legislation.”

Postal Service: Soon to be extinct?

That last detail is the sticking point in all this. Any change would require an act of Congress, a fact emphasized by unions, the Postal Service and the OPM alike. Unfortunately for the Postal Service, Congress is unlikely to act on this any time soon.

With a 2012 budget fight looming, any solution that would increase the federal deficit by shifting money from a federal pension system into a financially independent organization’s retirement accounts is not going to be popular.

As if to confirm this very notion, Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) introduced a bill last month that would resolve this exact issue by transferring all surplus contributions into the USPS Retiree Health Benefit Fund. The American Postal Workers Union Thursday came out in support of the bill, and higher-ups at NALC tell The American Independent that they’re happy with it as well, but it may not have the necessary support where it counts. The bill has just 35 co-sponsors in the House. It’s currently in the Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee, which has instead turned its attention to a new Postal Service labor contract that House Democrats, postal unions and USPS management have all called fair, but that committee Republicans have alleged is too labor-friendly and only underscores the value of private courier services like UPS and FedEx.

In a hearing last month, amid Republican claims that the contract is inflexible and promotes high labor costs, Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.) said, “The Postal Service has become a dinosaur that will soon be extinct […] and that’s why I use FedEx and UPS.” In fact, one of the Postal Service’s fast-growing sectors is what it calls “last-mile service,” in which it delivers packages door-to-door on behalf of UPS and FedEx, which don’t provide universal service.

Of the push to devalue postal unions and avoid releasing the pension funds, Sauber asks, “Should we really be crushing the Postal Service right now, at a time of 9 percent unemployment?” Congress has five months to decide its answer to that question. If the answer falls to Oversight Committee Republicans, America’s Postal Service may become all but unrecognizable in the near future.

Postal Service officials have blamed the recession for the agency’s financial woes, but the economy is simply exacerbating lost postal revenue from the greater trend of paperless communication. According to internal estimates, lost revenue will skyrocket over the next decade, putting the Post Office a staggering quarter-trillion dollars ($238 billion to be exact) in the red by 2021 if current trends continue.

For several years, the Postal Service has been considering cutting Saturday delivery in order to slow down some of its losses. Polls have shown that the public is in support of cutting Saturday service, and the Postmaster General has strongly advocated doing so. However, last month, the U.S. Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC), an independent government body, released a report (PDF) concluding that the Postal Service has vastly overestimated the savings that a five-day delivery schedule would provide and that any savings would be undercut by the diminished quality of service stemming from such a reduced schedule.

The PRC says that dropping Saturday service would result in annual overall savings of $1.7 billion, compared to the Postal Service estimate of $3.1 billion — no small number, but a drop in the bucket compared to what the Postal Service stands to lose.

The USPS has stood by its own estimates. The Postal Service and the PRC have dueling requests to Congress to take their side of the issue, but given the USPS is almost 100 percent privately-funded, an overhaul is unlikely to be a top priority for lawmakers during the current budget crunch.

The Postal Service’s own budget crisis means that it will run out of money to remain fully operational by September 30. “We will pay employees and deliver mail,” Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe told a House subcommittee last month. “The thing we will not do is be able to pay the federal government.”

The greatest impact of defaulting on its obligations would be an inability to continue funding retiree health benefits. To fix the situation, the USPS and the American Postal Workers Union are renegotiating their labor contract to up employee contributions to pensions and increase “noncareer” flexible jobs, but the estimated $3.8 billion saved over four years is still not enough to make up for the Postal Service’s losses, both immediate and long-term.

Some Republicans in Congress have seized the opportunity to continue their party’s national push against unions. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and no friend of labor, has pledged to review the new labor contract.

“The real issue facing the Postal Service right now is labor costs, which make up 80 cents of every dollar they spend,” committee member Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.) said in a statement.

Still, with many deriding internal and Democrat-offered solutions to the Postal Service’s seemingly intractable revenue problem for being unrealistically optimistic, the USPS will have to find a solution somewhere, somehow that’s acceptable to its 670,000 employees (down from a high of more than 900,000 in 1999) without putting itself in danger of total collapse. The future of the mail depends on it.

The pledge stated: #

I will use the full power of my office, including impeachment if necessary, to insure the Executive Branch secures America’s border immediately and begins to adequately enforce the existing immigration and border laws of the United States, which were enacted by Congress at the behest of America’s citizenry. #

Fred Piccolo, chief of staff for Rep. Dennis Ross, R-Lakeland, tells The Florida Independent that Ross stands by the pledge but says that nothing egregious has come up that would make him file to impeach Obama. Piccolo adds that Ross, like many Republicans, is watching, but that nothing along the lines of a high crime or misdemeanor has come up. #

Ross is a member of the Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement and a cosponsor of the Birthright Citizenship Act of 2011. Five other GOP members of Congress, including Adams and Stearns, have cosponsored the bill, which would stop the automatic granting of citizenship to all those born in the U.S. #

Piccolo adds that Ross also supports expanding E-Verify and has cosponsored legislation to reform family-sponsored immigration currently being discussed in the House subcommittee. #

The offices of Sandy Adams and Cliff Stearns did not return calls from the Independent to discuss their current position on the impeachment pledge. #

Ignatius reports that it would take a wide, regional focus:

The American peace plan would be linked with the issue of confronting Iran, which is Israel’s top priority, explained the second senior official. He described the issues as two halves of a single strategic problem: “We want to get the debate away from settlements and East Jerusalem and take it to a 30,000-feet level that can involve Jordan, Syria and other countries in the region,” as well as the Israelis and Palestinians.

“Incrementalism hasn’t worked,” continued the second official, explaining that the United States cannot allow the Palestinian problem to keep festering — providing fodder for Iran and other extremists. “As a global power with global responsibilities, we have to do something.” He said the plan would “take on the absolute requirements of Israeli security and the requirements of Palestinian sovereignty in a way that makes sense.”

This has apparently come with the aid of foreign-policy greybeards from both parties, like Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Sandy Berger, Frank Carlucci, Robert MacFarlane and Colin Powell. The administration certainly leaked that to frame this prospective initiative as a consensus view. (Because, frankly, it is.)

That, and the other specificity cited by Ignatius — the administration could start interagency discussions modeled on the Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy and unveil a plan by the fall — support the initial judgment that this has already been well-discussed internally. On the other hand, it could be a shot across Netanyahu’s bow, telling him that if he doesn’t take some confidence-building measures — and soon — the Obama administration will launch its own very big peacemaking agenda, and that’s not going to be something Israel will want to be viewed as opposing.