The Republican Way

A few days ago I received an email from Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley about downgrades in USPS service under Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s Delivering for America initiative, a ten-year plan to address operating costs and Postal Service debt by making mail delivery more efficient and cost-effective. Oregon was one of the first states in the nation where changes were rolled out.

A policy called Local Transportation Optimization eliminates evening pickup of mail and packages at post offices in rural communities for transportation to a processing center. The mail will be held until the next day when a truck from the processing center drops off the day’s mail for carrier deliveries and PO boxes. Other changes to the processing and delivery network will further slow down mail delivery. According to Senator Merkley,

In February, the Eugene and Medford Processing and Distribution Centers were downgraded, which means most local mail must now head up to Portland to be postmarked, traveling upwards of 500 miles roundtrip before getting delivered.

This means that “a letter being mailed from a home in Klamath Falls to another home in Klamath Falls must now travel through Portland before it can be delivered.”

There is bipartisan concern about the adverse effect of these changes on the conduct of business, payment of bills, delivery of prescriptions, and voting by mail in small towns and rural communities. Newsweek reported last month that

A group of 26 U.S. senators, including 13 Republicans representing states with large rural areas, sent DeJoy a letter this week demanding that he works to "improve service immediately" and "restore status quo operations as much as practicable" in locations where his cost-cutting measures have resulted in significant delivery delays.

The senators argued that areas where USPS service has recently been changed under DeJoy's "Delivering for America" initiative have suffered "critical delays for mail that requires overnight delivery," with the possibility of on-time deliveries "for critical mail like medications and laboratory tests" having been "eliminated" in some areas. (Slisco, Trump-Appointed USPS Postmaster)

The USPS is a federal agency but does not receive tax dollars for operating expenses, which are covered by sale of postage, products, and services. The agency has a mandate “to be self-financing and to serve every American community through the affordable, reliable and secure delivery of mail and packages to 167 million addresses six and often seven days a week.” Annual operating losses run into the billions.

DeJoy testified at a May meeting of the Postal Service Board of Governors that there have been “no comprehensive initiatives from Congress, the Postal Regulatory Commission, the mailing industry, or Postal management for that matter, as to how to stem these losses” and “no strategies or guidance” on how to address them (USPS, Postmaster General). Nothing found in my limited research contradicts DeJoy’s assertion. Financial assistance from the federal government is sporadic and sometimes comes with trip wires. In 2020 the CARES Act provided a $10 billion emergency loan with onerous conditions that led the vice chairman of the USPS Board of Governors to resign, saying that Treasury demands threatened to turn the USPS into a “political tool” (Powell, Wessel, How is).

The Post Office Department was created in 1792 and became a cabinet-level department in 1872. In1971 the department was replaced by the United States Postal Service, an independent entity within the executive branch operated by a Board of Governors made up of the Postmaster General, Deputy Postmaster General, and seven members appointed by the President and approved by the Senate for seven-year terms. A separate Postal Regulatory Commission with five members appointed for six-year terms by the President and confirmed by the Senate is tasked with the mission to “ensure transparency and accountability” and to “foster a vital and efficient universal mail system.”

DeJoy came to the USPS from private business. He was the founder and CEO of the logistics and freight company New Breed Logistics as well as a major Republican Party donor and fundraiser for Donald Trump. His Delivering for America initiative proposes to deal with deficits by cutting services and increasing rates. On his watch the USPS has been raising rates on a biannual basis and he “has tapped into the authority he won in 2020 to increase prices more than the rate of inflation on nearly every allowable occasion” (Katz, Senators call). Critics contend that DeJoy’s rate hikes have contributed to a decrease in mail volume that exacerbates the debt problem.

In 2006 Congress imposed an additional burden on top of the requirement to be self-funding and to serve every American community through the affordable, reliable, and secure delivery of mail and packages:

Unlike other employers…the USPS is required by the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) of 2006 to pre-fund retiree health costs out of current income. The unique drag on the Postal Service comes from this congressional requirement. (Powell, Wessel, How is)

The USPS makes “last-mile” deliveries to many rural and other areas on behalf of private companies for whom these deliveries are not profitable and is an essential component of the National Response Framework (NRF)

which specifies how the nation responds to all types of disasters and emergencies…The USPS is identified as a support agency for eight of the 15 Emergency Support Functions (ESFs) in the NRF, where its capacity for transportation, logistics, information dissemination, public safety and security, and many others, are expected to help the nation respond to crises. (Pollard, Davis, The United States Postal Service)

The Postal Service faces grave challenges as a consequence of conflicting and perhaps incompatible mandates. DeJoy argues that his Delivering for America initiative must be given time to work. Fair enough. It appears, however, that the more likely outcome will be erosion of service with little impact on USPS debt. The usual suspects issue blithe calls for privatization as the cure for all ills. From my wing the usual suspects charge that privatization is what DeJoy is after. We would be better served by proposals for serious alternatives to the DeJoy approach.

Comparison of the USPS with other federal agencies should be undertaken with caution and a soupçon of salt. My own bias may be surfacing when I see a familiar dynamic at work. It is the Republican way to underfund federal agencies, denying them the resources needed to fulfill their missions efficiently and effectively, and then to use the shortcomings that follow as rationale to further defund programs and departments or eliminate them altogether. The campaign to undermine public education mentioned in my June 1 newsletter is one example. Another is Republican refusal to seriously consider, much less pass, comprehensive immigration reform that would provide desperately needed resources to process asylum claims and address the host of other immigration and border issues.

Erosion of the Postal Service commitment to provide every American community with affordable, reliable, and secure mail delivery, the campaign against public education, and pursuit of a crude immigration and border policy rooted in xenophobia and cruelty offer a preview of what lies ahead if Donald Trump is elected in November or otherwise installed as president in January 2025. Any differences we have with Joe Biden, and my reservations are profound, pale before the prospect of a Trump restoration. The moral and pragmatic imperative to support Biden in November could not be greater.

Keep the faith.
Stand with Ukraine.
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References and Related Reading

• Roman Battaglia, Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden and others say consolidation efforts by the postal service will be costly for businesses and residents, Oregon Public Broadcasting, May 29, 2024

• Sara Fischer, Scoop: Senators to debut a measure providing postal service relief for newspapers, Axios, May 21, 2024

• Allison Frost, USPS cost-cutting measures affect rural communities, Oregon Public Broadcasting, April 11, 2024

• Eric Katz, Senators call on postal board to abandon DeJoy’s USPS reforms, Government Executive, April 24, 2024

• Jacob Knutson, U.S. Postal Service set to lose $6.5 billion this year, Axios, November 16, 2023

• Jay Kuo interviews Georgetown University professor Thomas Zimmer, The Right Has A Terrifying Second Trump Term Plan Called Project 2025, The Big Picture, May 21, 2024

• Michael S. Pollard, Lois M. Davis, The United States Postal Service Is More 'Essential' Than You Thought, Rand, August 25, 2020

• Tyler Powell, David Wessel, How is the U.S. Postal Service governed and funded?, Brookings, August 26, 2020

• Bernie Sanders, et al., letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, March 13, 2024

• David Shepardson, US Postal Service reports $6.5 billion net loss for 2023 fiscal year, Reuters, November 15, 2023

• Parker Sheppard, Do We Still Need the Post Office?, Heritage Foundation, October 12, 2023

• Aila Slisco, Trump-Appointed USPS Postmaster General Draws Republican Rebuke, Newsweek, May 10, 2024

• Dirk VanderHart, Oregon elections officials meet with USPS after delays reported in some ballot returns, Oregon Public Broadcasting, May 16, 2024

• Save the Post Office

• US Government Accountability Office, U.S. Postal Service Primer: Answers to Key Questions about Reform Issues, September 23, 2021

• USPS, Delivering for America

• USPS, Postmaster General and CEO Louis DeJoy’s Remarks During May 9, 2024, Postal Service Board of Governors Meeting, May 9, 2024