Fight rages over future of the mail

Its roots stretch back almost 250 years to the Second Continental Congress. Americans consistently rate it their favorite federal agency, and with a workforce of more than half a million scattered across the country, it employs more people than any government entity outside the military.

But as Washington begins to battle over the next round of coronavirus relief funding, the U.S. Postal Service has landed improbably at the center of one of the most bitter political disputes over who should be rescued, and at what cost.

The future of the mail may hang in the balance.

Postal leaders and their allies have made unusually blunt appeals for support in recent weeks, running advertisements on President Donald Trump’s favorite Fox News programs and laying out an urgent account of how the pandemic has had a “devastating effect” on the U.S. mail service. Without a financial rescue from Congress, they have warned, an agency that normally runs without taxpayer funds could run out of cash as soon as late September.

But after nearly reaching a bipartisan deal for a multibillion dollar bailout in the last coronavirus rescue package in late March, Republicans and Democrats have sharply diverged over whether to provide a lifeline. Now, the fight over the future of the Postal Service has spilled onto the campaign trail, increasingly freighted by deeply held disagreements about labor rights, the role of government versus private enterprise in providing basic services, and voting access.

On one side is Trump and his Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, who have largely looked at the agency’s worsening bottom line as a problem of its own making.

“The Postal Service is a joke,” Trump declared recently, announcing he would not support any additional financial support for the agency unless it raised package rates by 400%.

It was the White House that intervened in March, nixing a bipartisan plan to provide $13 billion to the Postal Service. And administration officials have made it clear they will not sign off on any financial support — either in the form of a loan or direct funding — unless the Postal Service agrees to rate increases, labor concessions and other changes.

Democrats, for their part, have positioned themselves as protectors of the agency, joined by large retailers like Amazon and CVS that rely on the Postal Service to deliver millions of packages a year at low rates. In the House, they are preparing to introduce a massive relief bill that would give the agency much of what it has asked for, including $25 billion in direct funding plus additional debt relief measures.