Pelosi calls House back for vote on postal bill
Says USPS is pandemic’s ‘Election Central’
WASHINGTON – Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calling the House back into session over the crisis at the U.S. Postal Service, setting up a political showdown amid growing concerns that the Trump White House is trying to undermine the agency before the election.
Pelosi is cutting short lawmakers’ summer recess with a vote expected Saturday on legislation that would prohibit changes at the agency as tensions mount. President Donald Trump’s new postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, sparked nationwide outcry over delays, new prices and cutbacks just as millions of Americans will be trying to vote by mail to avoid polling places during the coronavirus outbreak.
The Postal Service said it stopped removing mailboxes and mail-sorting machines. Trump denied that he was asking for the mail to be delayed even as he leveled fresh criticism on universal ballots and mail-in voting.
“Wouldn’t do that,” Trump said. “I have encouraged everybody: Speed up the mail, not slow the mail.”
DeJoy, a major Republican donor, will testify Aug. 24 before Congress, House Democrats said.
The decision to recall the House, made after a weekend of high-level leadership discussions, carries a political punch. Voting in the House will highlight the issue after the weeklong Democratic National Convention nominates Joe Biden as the party’s presidential pick. It will pressure the Republicanheld Senate to respond as the Republican convention is to begin. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has dismissed senators for the summer recess.
“In a time of a pandemic, the Postal Service is Election Central,” Pelosi wrote Sunday in a letter to colleagues, who had been expected to be out of session until September. “Lives, livelihoods and the life of our American Democracy are under threat from the president.”
Trump on Monday defended DeJoy, a former supply-chain CEO who took over the Postal Service in June, but also criticized postal operations and claimed that universal mail-in ballots would be “a disaster.”
“I want to make the post office great again,” Trump said on “Fox & Friends.” Later at the White House he denied asking for a mail-delivery slow down.
Trump said he wants “to have a post office that runs without losing billions and billions of dollars a year.”
At an event in Horse Cave, Ky., on Monday, McConnell distanced himself from Trump’s complaints about mail operations. But he also declined to recall senators to Washington, asserting the Postal Service “is going to be just fine.”
“We’re going to make sure that the ability to function going into the election is not adversely affected,” McConnell said. “And I don’t share the president’s concerns.”
On Monday, two lawmakers called on the FBI to investigate whether DeJoy or members of the Postal Board of Governors might have committed a crime in slowing the mail.
Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., cited reports that mail-sorting machines were being dismantled and policy changes have delayed mail delivery.
“It is not unreasonable to conclude that Postmaster General DeJoy and the Board of Governors may be executing Donald Trump’s desire to affect mail-in balloting,” they wrote in the letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Congress is at a standoff over postal operations. House Democrats approved funds as part of a pending COVID-19 relief package but Trump and Senate Republicans have balked at additional funds for election security. McConnell held a conference call Monday with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and GOP senators on the broader virus aid package.
The legislation being prepared for Saturday’s vote, the “Delivering for America Act,” would prohibit the Postal Service from implementing any changes to operations or level of service it had in place on Jan. 1.
DeJoy, a major Republican donor and ally of the president who took control of the agency in June, has pledged to modernize the money-losing agency to make it more efficient, and eliminated most overtime for postal workers, imposed restrictions on transportation and reduced of the quantity and use of mailprocessing equipment.
Trump said last week that he was blocking a $25 billion emergency injection sought by the Postal Service, as well as a Democratic proposal to provide $3.6 billion in additional election money for the states. The money for the post office is intended to help with processing an expected surge of mail-in ballots. Both funding requests have been tied up in congressional negotiations over a new coronavirus relief package.
The president’s critics contend that Trump has made the calculation that a lower voter turnout would improve his chances of winning a second term.
“What you are witnessing is a president of the United States who is doing everything he can to suppress the vote, make it harder for people to engage in mail-in balloting at a time when people will be putting their lives on the line by having to go out to a polling station and vote,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
In announcing the upcoming hearing, congressional Democrats said in a statement: “The postmaster general and top Postal Service leadership must answer to the Congress and the American people as to why they are pushing these dangerous new policies that threaten to silence the voices of millions, just months before the election.”
Funding a cash-strapped Postal Service has quickly turned into a top campaign issue as Trump presses his unsupported claim that increased mail-in voting would undermine the credibility of the election.
The president’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, tried on Sunday to counter criticism that Trump was trying to stifle turnout with national and battleground state polls showing him facing a difficult path to reelection against Biden.
“I’ll give you that guarantee right now: The president of the United States is not going to interfere with anybody casting their vote in a legitimate way, whether it’s the post office or anything else,” Meadows said.
But Democrats said changes made by DeJoy constitute “a grave threat to the integrity of the election and to our very democracy.”
The agency in the meantime is now seeking a short-term, end-of-the-year rate increase, according to a notice filed Friday with the Postal Regulatory Commission. The reasons: increased expenses, heightened demand for online packages.