Chamber member Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., And 174 other Democrats in the House signed a letter sent Wednesday to the new Postmaster General demanding that the agency reverse operating changes they claim it post-in vote on November 3 will hamper.
“It is always essential that the Postal Service can deliver mail and effectively. During the once-in-a-century health and economic crisis of COVID-19, the smooth functioning of the Postal Service is a matter of life-or-death, and is critical of protecting the lives, livelihoods and lives of our American Democracy, “the lawmakers wrote.
“The Second Chamber is seriously concerned that you are implementing policies that accelerate the crisis at the Postal Service, including directing post offices not to treat election posts as First Class. If this is implemented now, when the elections come, this policy will further delay cause for election post that will decipher voters and put significant financial pressure on voting rights. “
The new post of President Donald Trump of the Postal Service, Louis DeJoy, recently made a series of changes to the agency that could disrupt mail for millions of Americans, especially absent and mail-in polls before election day.
The austerity measures, designed to address the Postal Service’s years of financial trouble, were lifted last month after DeJoy, a Trump donor and Republican lender who owned a North Carolina supply chain, took the top job in June. DeJoy, 63, is the first postmaster general in nearly two decades to be no postal worker.
DeJoy also eliminated overtime for hundreds of thousands of postal workers and mandates that mail be stored until the next day when distribution centers run late. He also removed or reassigned nearly two dozen post leaders, implemented a tenancy and demanded “authority for early retirement” for nonunion employees.
Last week, the U.S. Postal Service announced a third-quarter net loss of $ 2.2 billion. In a statement, the agency said even $ 10 billion in congressional funding funds “would not address the Postal Service’s broken business model.”
“We will respond immediately to members of Congress,” a spokesman for the postal service said. They also commented on comments made by DeJoy last week, in which he maintained that the agency could turn the tide, but “can not correct the election board’s mistakes if they fail to put in place processes that take into account with our normal processing and delivery standards. ”
Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer also had a closed-door meeting this month with DeJoy describing Schumer as “heated.” House Democrats have demanded measures in any final bill for pandemic spending that would roll back the operational changes and give the agency $ 25 billion in one-time funding.
At Wednesday’s briefing in the White House, Trump opposed the Post Office’s handling of the large number of votes for mail in the pandemic and the request for funding.
“The post office has been poorly executed for many, many decades,” he said. “Great people at the post office, incredible people, but they’ve had very poor leadership for many years.”
He added, “And the bill will not happen because they do not even want to talk about them, because we can not give them the kind of ridiculous things they want.”
