US Postal Service: House supports election boost

The U.S. House of Representatives has tabled a bill that would put $ 25 billion (£ 19 billion) into the Postal Service (USPS) for the November election.

The legislation would also block cuts and changes that critics have said will hinder mail-in voting.

Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi withdrew legislators from the summer recess to vote on the bill, which she said would protect the USPS.

After the vote, President Trump tweets the measure was a Democrat ballot box.

“Representatives of the Post Office have stated several times that they do not need money, and will not make any changes,” Donald Trump said. He has threatened to veto the bill, which in any case is unlikely to make progress in the Republican-controlled Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the House would “absolutely not pass” the bill.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said earlier that further austerity measures at the postal service were suspended until after the November vote.

A delay in mail deliveries amid cost-cutting measures at USPS has raised fears about how one of the oldest and most trusted institutions in the US could process an unusual influx of mail-in-votes due to the coronavirus pandemic.

President Trump has vehemently opposed e-mails and has repeatedly suggested that it could lead to widespread voter fraud, although there is no evidence to support it.

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The “Delivering for America Act” by the House on a rare Saturday afternoon includes $ 25 billion in funding for coronavirus for emergency response by the USPS board.

More than a dozen Republicans cross the floor to vote with their Democratic opponents.

The bill would require the USPS to treat all official election correspondence as first class mail.

The service would be prohibited until January 2021 from implementing or approving any changes to operations or service levels that would “provide fast, reliable and efficient service”, including closing or reducing the hours of post offices, removing mail sorting machines and mailboxes, if stops paying for overtime.

“This is not a partisan issue,” Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney, the author of the bill, said before the debate. “It makes absolutely no sense to impose these kinds of dangerous cuts in the midst of a pandemic and just months before the November elections.”

Ms Pelosi emphasized that the USPS was not a company.

“While we always want to subject every federal dollar to the control of what we get for it, let’s think it’s a service. No company I can think of would ever be saddled with what we’ve done to it.” the Postal Service, ‘she added.

Republican political leaders said Friday that Democrats “sought to spread baseless conspiracy theories about the USPS for political gain” and had “produced a crisis to undermine President Trump at the expense of America’s institutions.”

They also condemned Democrats for pursuing what they said was “an unnecessary bailout plan that would not solve any of the underlying operational problems”.

On Friday, the postmaster general told a House committee that “there have been no changes to electoral post policy” and that the USPS was “fully capable and committed to completing the nation’s election post fully and on time. delivery “.

Mr DeJoy – a top Republican donor and former executive logistics appointee to head the agency in May – acknowledged that the changes he had made delayed some mail delivery, but insisted it was “scandalous” to indicate what they meant. were to help President Trump in November.