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Tribute to the Late Sen. Joseph Lieberman

Tribute to the Late Sen. Joseph Lieberman
By Bob Levi
NAPS Director of Legislative & Political Affairs

On March 27, Joe Lieberman—former senator (D, I-CT), former chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and former Democratic nominee for Vice President—unexpectedly died. I am proud to say he was my friend.

Lieberman and I had a multi-faceted relationship that stretched beyond the perimeter of Capitol Hill. This bond embraced our respective families. I would like to mention a small, but consequential part of my “professional” relationship with him. That is, my interactions with him as a senator and as chairman of the Senate committee with jurisdiction over the Postal Service.

As committee chairman, Lieberman demonstrated bipartisanship; his 2012 postal legislation—the 21st Century Postal Service Act—passed overwhelmingly in the Senate. I believe his postal bill was a guidepost for the Postal Reform Act of 2022.

The 2012 bill, introduced by Sens. Lieberman and Susan Collins (R-ME), was controversial in several ways, but included three provisions on which the Postal Reform Act of 2022 was built. First, the Lieberman bill would have established a mechanism to create a Postal Service Health Benefits Program with benefits equivalent to those available under the FEHBP.

Second, the measure would have established a Medicare education program for postal employees and annuitants, which would have smoothed a transition to Medicare-integration. And third, the bill would have eliminated 80% (although not 100%) of the Postal Service’s retiree health care liability.

There also were a few provisions that the postal community currently is promoting because they were not included in the 2022 law. These include a fair recalculation of the postal retirement liability and enhanced performance accountability. The legislation passed the Senate 62-37 on April 25, 2012. However, the House Oversight and Reform Committee, then chaired by Rep. Darrel Issa (R-CA), never considered it.

Lieberman also was an outspoken proponent for federal and postal employees to more fully take part in American democracy. As a first-term senator, he advocated modernizing the Hatch Act, the law restricting the political participation of postal and federal employees.

As a junior member of the committee he subsequently would chair, Lieberman aggressively pushed for legislation to enable postal and federal employees to campaign for electoral candidates, run for office in nonpartisan elections and solicit contributions for their association’s political action committee (e.g., SPAC). In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed Hatch Act reform into law. (This was the first presidential bill signing I witnessed.)

In sum, my professional and personal life enmeshed with Joe Lieberman’s. I will miss his counsel, his inspiration, his leadership, but, most importantly—his friendship. May his memory be a blessing.