GOP War On The U.S. Postal Service: DeJoy To Slow The Mail, Increase Rates

Update to Time For The Biden Administration To Save The U.S. Postal Service.

The Washington Post reported on Friday about Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s continuing sabotage of the U.S. Postal Service. Postmaster general’s new plan for USPS is said to include slower mail and higher prices:

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is preparing to put all first-class mail onto a single delivery track, according to two people briefed on his strategic plan for the U.S. Postal Service, a move that would mean slower and more costly delivery for both consumers and commercial mailers.

DeJoy, with the backing of the agency’s bipartisan but Trump-appointed governing board, has discussed plans to eliminate a tier of first-class mail — letters, bills and other envelope-sized correspondence sent to a local address — designated for delivery in two days. Instead, all first-class mail would be lumped into the same three- to five-day window, the current benchmark for nonlocal mail.

That class of mail is already struggling; only 38 percent was delivered on time at the end of 2020, the Postal Service reported in federal court. Customers have reported bills being held up, and holiday cards and packages still in transit. Pharmacies and prescription benefits managers have told patients to request medication refills early to leave additional time for mail delays. The agency has not disclosed on-time scores yet in 2021.

The new service standards are part of a strategic plan that DeJoy, a former logistics executive and major Republican donor, is set to roll out in the coming days. While the changes are not expected to have a significant impact on local service, the people said, they have commercial mailers, including banks, insurers, retailers and publications, worried they may aggravate existing slowdowns for nonlocal mail.

The plan also prevents first-class mail from being shipped by airplane [isn’t this where the term “air mail” came from?], said the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential conversations, forcing all of it into trucks and a relay of distribution depots.

The operational shifts would coincide with a push for significantly higher postage rates — which DeJoy has said was “imminent” — after the agency lost $9.2 billion in 2020 due to steep, pandemic-related declines in mail volume. It also has $188.4 billion in liabilities, the bulk of which is tied to pension and retiree health care obligations. Leaders have long sought to raise new revenue and, in 2021, are expected to pursue the first big postage rate increase in more than a decade, which could add up to a 9 percent jump compounded annually.

The delivery slowdowns coupled with price increases, mailing industry officials say, could threaten the system by driving commercial mailers to cut costs and pull more volume out of the mail stream. In the long run, that could force the Postal Service to increase postage rates on the customers left in the system — including small businesses, seniors and people with disabilities — or to further cut service.

“The service standards they have today have never been enforced. Customers are not getting the service they pay for already,” said Michael Plunkett, president and chief executive of PostCom, a national postal commerce advocacy group. “Before degrading service even more, I truly hope there’s something more valuable and impressive in that plan.”

DeJoy in an emailed statement declined to discuss his plan, saying it was not finalized. He said Postal Service leaders had discussed the proposal for eight months and that any new operations would retain six- and sometimes seven-day delivery. The board of governors, he said, backs the proposed policies.

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Congressional Democrats are pushing President Biden to overhaul the Postal Service’s leadership by filling the four open seats on the governing board. Such a move would create a majority bloc of Democrats with the votes to unseat DeJoy, if desired. Otherwise, Biden cannot directly intervene in postal operations; mail policy is insulated by law from elected officials to prevent politicians from tinkering with the mail.

In a statement Monday, the White House said Biden was focused on filling the board vacancies with nominees who “reflect his commitment to the workers of the U.S. Postal Service — who deliver on the post office’s vital universal service obligation.”

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DeJoy and Ron Bloom, the chairman of the Postal Service Board of Governors, are set to testify Feb. 24 before a House panel on a reform bill and funding request for the agency. Letters sent to witnesses by the House Oversight and Reform Committee asked them to come prepared to discuss “legislative proposals to place the Postal Service on a more sustainable financial footing going forward while preserving the delivery performance standards on which the American people rely.”

In an earlier hearing on the Postal Service in August, Democrats pressed DeJoy on service cuts, especially with the November election months away and heavier reliance on mailed ballots because of the pandemic. DeJoy had already begun discussing eliminating air transportation for first-class mail before the hearing, according to four people familiar with internal agency discussions, and modifying delivery windows to allow more time for transportation.

The Washington Post previously reported in a lengthy analysis, Biden inherited a USPS crisis. Here’s how Democrats want to fix it. I covered much of the same ground in my earlier post at the top of this post.

It is time to fill the vacancies on the governing board and to fire the Postmaster General (and eventually replace all the other trump appointees). Congress must enact all of the postal reforms currently under consideration in Congress to save the U.S. Postal Service from Republican attempts to destroy it.