mickey barnett. mickey barnett is among a group of five bipartisan nominees to the postal board of governors submitted by a democratic president. two of the nominees republicans, mickey one of those, three of them are democrats. if we don't confirm mr. barnett and his colleagues by december 8, a little -- about on four weeks from now mr. barnett currently the board's chair will be forced to leave the board. if that happens the postal board of governors will not have enough members to achieve a quorum and will not be able to conduct business. at the time the postal service is struggling to aat the present time to the internet world we live in, being unable to conduct business would not be good for the postal service. in fact, it would be very bad and we need to avoid that happening. if it does happen, we'll be inviting a disaster. today because of our inability to come to consensus on postal reform legislation and they're colleague closer, good work of dr. coburn and other people to develop a consensu

okay. >> what you said so far there is you're not going to tear up barnett, and if we didn't have barnett, in any case, we would need some other case of needs assessment. and you have used the word. don't you think there is merit -- everyone is agreed that the barnett formula is overgenerous at the expense of the english. there isn't a single analysis that has concluded otherwise. don't you think, therefore, there is at least a least the na grand commission of some sort of all the nations to look into the question of how best to allocate resources according to need between them? >> well, it's something i'm sure, you know, it does get examined by experts and commissions and i'm very happy for that to continue. i'm just saying i made a commitment. this is not something that is on my horizon and i'm sticking to that. the most important thing is to deliver this fiscal devolution which in itself is an important thing but decreases the relevance of barnett. i'm sure people will argue about it. >> so the answer to that is no really? >> as i've said, it's not on my horizon. >> i would just like t

money between england and scotland is determined by the barnett formula. but as i said, if you didn't have that formula, you'd have to have something else. it would still then be an accident of geography if you were living just one side of the border or the other side of the border as to which pot your money was coming from. so you've got the national distributions, then you have the distributions within each nation, which should be done by the authorities. >> of course, but coming back to the fact that if you have a larger cake to distribute in first place and that that is a larger cake per head of population, that it's very difficult to make adjustments for that that seem fair across borders, and i think that -- >> i think that's really important. because -- i know, but one more go at this because i think it's important. if scotland and england were exactly the same size and same scale and there was a radically different distribution, it would have more power. i often say to english colleagues who say why don't -- the barnett formula, is so unfair. if yo