Postal Employee Appeal Rights Amendment Act of 2025

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Bill ID: 119/hr/1559
Last Updated: November 21, 2025

Sponsored by

Rep. Connolly, Gerald E. [D-VA-11]

ID: C001078

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5. Conference: If both chambers pass different versions, a conference committee reconciles the differences.

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Bill Summary

Another thrilling episode of "Congressional Theater" brought to you by the esteemed members of the 119th Congress. Today's feature presentation is HR 1559, the Postal Employee Appeal Rights Amendment Act of 2025. *yawn*

**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The bill's stated purpose is to extend the right of appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) to certain employees of the United States Postal Service (USPS). Wow, how noble. I'm sure it has nothing to do with currying favor with postal unions or padding the resumes of its sponsors, Mr. Connolly and Mr. Garbarino.

**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill amends Section 1005(a)(4)(A)(ii)(I) of title 39, United States Code, to include certain USPS employees in supervisory, professional, technical, clerical, administrative, or managerial positions covered by the Executive and Administrative Schedule. Oh, what a mouthful. In simpler terms, it's a minor tweak to an existing law that will likely have negligible impact on the lives of most Americans.

**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The affected parties include USPS employees who aren't represented by a bargaining representative recognized under section 1203 and are in certain positions covered by the Executive and Administrative Schedule. I'm sure these individuals are just thrilled to be the beneficiaries of this monumental legislation. The real stakeholders, however, are likely the postal unions and special interest groups that will use this bill as leverage for future negotiations.

**Potential Impact & Implications:** The potential impact is minimal, but the implications are rich in comedic value. This bill is a classic example of "legislative theater," where lawmakers pretend to address a pressing issue while actually doing nothing substantial. It's a clever way to waste taxpayer time and money on a non-problem. The real disease here is the chronic condition of "Congressional Inertia," where our esteemed representatives prioritize self-serving grandstanding over meaningful policy changes.

Diagnosis: This bill is suffering from a severe case of "Symbolic Legislation Syndrome" (SLS), characterized by a propensity for empty gestures, vague language, and an overall lack of substance. Treatment involves a healthy dose of skepticism, a strong stomach for bureaucratic nonsense, and a willingness to call out the obvious lies and posturing.

Prognosis: This bill will likely pass with minimal fanfare, only to be forgotten in the annals of legislative history. Meanwhile, the real issues plaguing our postal system – inefficiency, mismanagement, and declining services – will continue to fester, ignored by our courageous lawmakers.

Related Topics

Federal Budget & Appropriations State & Local Government Affairs Congressional Rules & Procedures Civil Rights & Liberties Transportation & Infrastructure Small Business & Entrepreneurship Government Operations & Accountability Criminal Justice & Law Enforcement National Security & Intelligence
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đź’° Campaign Finance Network

Rep. Connolly, Gerald E. [D-VA-11]

Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle

Total Contributions
$69,150
18 donors
PACs
$0
Organizations
$2,900
Committees
$0
Individuals
$66,000

No PAC contributions found

1
HUNTON ANDREWS KURTH LLP
1 transaction
$2,900

No committee contributions found

1
PUNARO, ARNOLD
2 transactions
$6,600
2
PUNARO, JULIA
2 transactions
$6,600
3
HALE, KAREN
2 transactions
$6,600
4
PHILLIPS, STERLING
2 transactions
$6,600
5
HERSHMAN, MICHAEL J.
1 transaction
$3,300
6
TRONE, DAVID
1 transaction
$3,300
7
MISENER, PAUL E
1 transaction
$3,300
8
RABAUT, TOM W
1 transaction
$3,300
9
WALKER, KENT
1 transaction
$3,300
10
CARLSON, TERESA
1 transaction
$3,300
11
GURU, RAM
1 transaction
$3,300
12
HALL SR, DON
1 transaction
$3,300
13
HALL, DAVID
1 transaction
$3,300
14
ABOD, CARAH
1 transaction
$3,300
15
ABOD, KIM
1 transaction
$3,300
16
BERBERIAN, ANNETTE
1 transaction
$3,300

Donor Network - Rep. Connolly, Gerald E. [D-VA-11]

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Total contributions: $69,150

Top Donors - Rep. Connolly, Gerald E. [D-VA-11]

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Project 2025 Policy Matches

This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document. Higher similarity scores indicate stronger thematic connections.

Introduction

Low 57.2%
Pages: 103-105

— 70 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Title 5 of the U.S. Code charges the OPM with executing, administering, and enforcing the rules, regulations, and laws governing the civil service.2 It grants the OPM direct responsibility for activities like retirement, pay, health, training, federal unionization, suitability, and classification functions not specifically granted to other agencies by statute. The agency’s Director is charged with aiding the President, as the President may request, in preparing such civil service rules as the President pre- scribes and otherwise advising the President on actions that may be taken to promote an efficient civil service and a systematic application of the merit system principles, including recommending policies relating to the selection, promotion, transfer, per- formance, pay, conditions of service, tenure, and separation of employees. The MSPB is the lead adjudicator for hearing and resolving cases and contro- versies for 2.2 million federal employees.3 It is required to conduct fair and neutral case adjudications, regulatory reviews, and actions and studies to improve the workforce. Its court-like adjudications investigate and hear appeals from agency actions such as furloughs, suspensions, demotions, and terminations and are appealable to the U.S. Court of Appeals. The FLRA hears appeals of agency personnel cases involving federal labor griev- ance procedures to provide judicial review with binding decisions appealable to appeals courts.4 It interprets the rights and duties of agencies and employee labor organizations—on management rights, OPM interpretations, recognition of labor organizations, and unfair labor practices—under the general principle of bargain- ing in good faith and compelling need. The OSC serves as the investigator, mediator, publisher, and prosecutor before the MSPB with respect to agency and employees regarding prohibited person- nel practices, Hatch Act5 politicization, Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act6 issues, and whistleblower complaints.7 The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has general respon- sibility for reviewing charges of employee discrimination against all civil rights breaches. However, it also administers a government employee section that investi- gates and adjudicates federal employee complaints concerning equal employment violations as with the private sector.8 This makes the agency an additional de facto factor in government personnel management. While not a personnel agency per se, the General Services Administration (GSA) is charged with general supervision of contracting.9 Today, there are many more contractors in government than there are civil service employees. The GSA must therefore be a part of any personnel management discussion. ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS OPM: Managing the Federal Bureaucracy. At the very pinnacle of the modern progressive program to make government competent stands the ideal of professionalized, career civil service. Since the turn of the 20th century,

Introduction

Low 57.2%
Pages: 103-105

— 70 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Title 5 of the U.S. Code charges the OPM with executing, administering, and enforcing the rules, regulations, and laws governing the civil service.2 It grants the OPM direct responsibility for activities like retirement, pay, health, training, federal unionization, suitability, and classification functions not specifically granted to other agencies by statute. The agency’s Director is charged with aiding the President, as the President may request, in preparing such civil service rules as the President pre- scribes and otherwise advising the President on actions that may be taken to promote an efficient civil service and a systematic application of the merit system principles, including recommending policies relating to the selection, promotion, transfer, per- formance, pay, conditions of service, tenure, and separation of employees. The MSPB is the lead adjudicator for hearing and resolving cases and contro- versies for 2.2 million federal employees.3 It is required to conduct fair and neutral case adjudications, regulatory reviews, and actions and studies to improve the workforce. Its court-like adjudications investigate and hear appeals from agency actions such as furloughs, suspensions, demotions, and terminations and are appealable to the U.S. Court of Appeals. The FLRA hears appeals of agency personnel cases involving federal labor griev- ance procedures to provide judicial review with binding decisions appealable to appeals courts.4 It interprets the rights and duties of agencies and employee labor organizations—on management rights, OPM interpretations, recognition of labor organizations, and unfair labor practices—under the general principle of bargain- ing in good faith and compelling need. The OSC serves as the investigator, mediator, publisher, and prosecutor before the MSPB with respect to agency and employees regarding prohibited person- nel practices, Hatch Act5 politicization, Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act6 issues, and whistleblower complaints.7 The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has general respon- sibility for reviewing charges of employee discrimination against all civil rights breaches. However, it also administers a government employee section that investi- gates and adjudicates federal employee complaints concerning equal employment violations as with the private sector.8 This makes the agency an additional de facto factor in government personnel management. While not a personnel agency per se, the General Services Administration (GSA) is charged with general supervision of contracting.9 Today, there are many more contractors in government than there are civil service employees. The GSA must therefore be a part of any personnel management discussion. ANALYSIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS OPM: Managing the Federal Bureaucracy. At the very pinnacle of the modern progressive program to make government competent stands the ideal of professionalized, career civil service. Since the turn of the 20th century, — 71 — Central Personnel Agencies: Managing the Bureaucracy progressives have sought a system that could effectively select, train, reward, and guard from partisan influence the neutral scientific experts they believe are required to staff the national government and run the administrative state. Their U.S. system was initiated by the Pendleton Act of 188310 and institutionalized by the 1930s New Deal to set principles and practices that were meant to ensure that expert merit rather than partisan favors or personal favoritism ruled within the federal bureaucracy. Yet, as public frustration with the civil service has grown, generating calls to “drain the swamp,” it has become clear that their project has had serious unintended consequences. The civil service was devised to replace the amateurism and presumed corrup- tion of the old spoils system, wherein government jobs rewarded loyal partisans who might or might not have professional backgrounds. Although the system appeared to be sufficient for the nation’s first century, progressive intellectuals and activists demanded a more professionalized, scientific, and politically neutral Administration. Progressives designed a merit system to promote expertise and shield bureaucrats from partisan political pressure, but it soon began to insulate civil servants from accountability. The modern merit system increasingly made it almost impossible to fire all but the most incompetent civil servants. Complying with arcane rules regarding recruiting, rating, hiring, and firing simply replaced the goal of cultivating competence and expertise. In the 1970s, Georgia Democratic Governor Jimmy Carter, then a political unknown, ran for President supporting New Deal programs and their Great Soci- ety expansion but opposing the way they were being administered. The policies were not actually reducing poverty, increasing prosperity, or improving the envi- ronment, he argued, and to make them work required fundamental bureaucratic reform. He correctly charged that almost all government employees were rated as “successful,” all received the same pay regardless of performance, and even the worst were impossible to fire—and he won the presidency. President Carter fulfilled his campaign promise by hiring Syracuse University Dean Alan Campbell, who served first as Chairman of the U.S. Civil Service Com- mission and then as Director of the OPM and helped him devise and pass the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 (CSRA)11 to reset the basic structure of today’s bureau- cracy. A new performance appraisal system was devised with a five rather than three distribution of rating categories and individual goals more related to agency missions and more related to employee promotion for all. Pay and benefits were based directly on improved performance appraisals (including sizable bonuses) for mid-level managers and senior executives. But time ran out on President Carter before the act could be fully executed, so it was left to President Ronald Reagan and his new OPM and agency leadership to implement. Overall, the new law seemed to work for a few years under Reagan, but the Carter– Reagan reforms were dissipated within a decade. Today, employee evaluation is back

Introduction

Low 52.6%
Pages: 542-544

— 509 — Department of Housing and Urban Development 3. Repeal the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation reinstituted under the Biden Administration30 and any other uses of special-purpose credit authorities to further equity.31 4. Eliminate the new Housing Supply Fund.32 l The Office of the Secretary should recommence proposed regulation put forward under the Trump Administration that would prohibit noncitizens, including all mixed-status families, from living in all federally assisted housing.33 HUD’s statutory obligations include providing housing for American citizens who are in need. HUD reforms must also ensure alignment with reforms implemented by other federal agencies where immigration status impacts public programs, certainly to include any reforms in the Public Charge regulatory framework administered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Local welfare organizations, not the federal government, should step up to provide welfare for the housing of noncitizens. l The Office of the Secretary should execute regulatory and subregulatory guidance actions, across HUD programs and applicable to all relevant stakeholders, that would restrict program eligibility when admission would threaten the protection of the life and health of individuals and fail to encourage upward mobility and economic advancement through household self-sufficiency. Where admissible in regulatory action, HUD should implement reforms reducing the implicit anti-marriage bias in housing assistance programs,34 strengthen work and work-readiness requirements,35 implement maximum term limits for residents in PBRA and TBRA programs,36 and end Housing First37 policies so that the department prioritizes mental health and substance abuse issues before jumping to permanent interventions in homelessness.38 Notwithstanding administrative reforms, Congress should enact legislation that protects life and eliminates provisions in federal housing and welfare benefits policies that discourage work, marriage, and meaningful paths to upward economic mobility. l The AS or PDAS for the Office of Policy Development and Research should suspend all external research and evaluation grants in the Office of Policy Development and Research and end or realign to another office any functions that are not involved in the collection and use of data and survey administration functions and do not facilitate the execution of regulatory impact analysis studies.

Showing 3 of 5 policy matches

About These Correlations

Policy matches are calculated using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text. A score of 60% or higher indicates meaningful thematic overlap. This does not imply direct causation or intent, but highlights areas where legislation aligns with Project 2025 policy objectives.