Years-long dispute roils mail delivery ahead of 2020 elections
WASHINGTON — In February 2013, Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Forest Hills, climbed into the bed of a pickup truck on the North Side and seized a microphone. Before 200 cheering supporters of the U.S. Postal Service, he railed against proposed cuts in mail delivery to five days a week.
“Don’t kid yourselves — it’s privatization, privatization, privatization,” Mr. Doyle said, arguing mail would be subject to the insidious creep of outsourcing.
“I’ll fight with you till the very end,” Mr. Doyle added.
Seven years later, that existential fear has multiplied as much of the country depends on reliable mail delivery now more than ever. While the COVID-19 pandemic has shut down stores and in-person gatherings, homebound Americans are reaching into their mailboxes for online purchases, medications, $1,200 government pandemic checks, communications with relatives and doctors, and so on.
Add to those essential deliveries a mail-in ballot, which states are planning to issue in the coming weeks so voters can participate in the 2020 elections during the pandemic that has made inperson polling a health risk. The prospect of a disputed election — and months to settle legal fighting — could be looming.
All the while, President Donald Trump has sought to sowing distrust in mail delivery, claiming that vote-by-mail options are rampant with fraud. He wrote on Twitter voting by mail would result in the “greatest Rigged Election in history.”
Last Thursday, Mr. Trump admitted he opposes more money for the U.S. Postal Service because he wants to make it harder to vote by mail, repeating his claim that mail-in voting would be “fraudulent.”
“They need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Mr. Trump said in an interview with Fox Business. If he vetoed that money, he said, “that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting because they’re not equipped to have it.”
Last month, the recently installed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy — a logistics executive who previously served as top fundraiser for the Republican National Convention — announced changes that are likely to slow mail delivery even further.
Mr. DeJoy, citing a need to trim costs, prohibited overtime pay, shut down sorting machines early and required letter carriers to leave mail behind when necessary to avoid extra trips or late delivery on routes. Some states have been informed they will have to pay more to mail ballots without causing widespread delays.
Mr. Doyle, in an interview last week, said his office has received calls from constituents about delayed mail and already has more than 20 complaints pending.
Mr. Trump “is trying to suppress the vote as much as he can, in as many ways he can,” Mr.
Doyle said. “It should be illegal. And any Republican that aids and abets him in doing it is also undermining our democracy.”
Business or service?
The urgency of securing mail delivery is rooted in years, if not decades, of debate in Washington over the Postal Service.
The troubles date back to the rise of email and grew with all forms of online platforms and digital communication. They accelerated even more with package delivery, as companies like FedEx and United Parcel Service become the lifeblood of e-commerce. The large overhead costs of running post offices could no longer be covered as revenue from mail delivery fell precipitously.
Postal workers’ unions have argued operations are stronger than the steep losses indicate. They blame a 2006 congressional mandate that required the Postal Service to fund future retirees’ health benefits — to the tune of more than $5 billion a year.
The ideological debate boils down to whether the U.S. Postal Service should run as a self-sustaining business or an essential government service, as enshrined in the Constitution.
Some lawmakers, largely Democrats, have argued for direct funding from Congress to help post offices survive. They point out the importance of universal mail services, especially for lowerincome and rural communities that may not have reliable internet access or other resources.
Postal service supporters often point out the nation’s founding legal document directs Congress to establish “post offices and post roads,” yet the U.S. Postal Service service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses. Rather, it relies entirely on revenues from the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.
Other lawmakers, largely Republicans, have resisted approving any taxpayer funding to support postal services and have instead leaned on service cuts. After all, they argue, the postal service should operate like a business, independent of government funding.
Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Butler, shortly after joining Congress in 2011, supported a House bill to require the Postal Service to close or consolidate retail facilities, mail processing facilities and other offices to achieve specific cost-cutting targets. It also would allow advertising in post offices and mail trucks to raise money.
In an op-ed that year, he acknowledged the “significant economic implications” that closing an Erie mail processing center, which was under review, would cause. The facility cut jobs in 2015 but remains open today.
In a statement last week, Mr. Kelly called the Postal Service a “treasured American institution.” He referred back to the 2011 bill as the correct approach, instead of appropriating dollars to prop up mail delivery.
“I don’t believe the simple act of throwing more money at the agency will create a sustainable path to success,” Mr. Kelly said. “To save USPS, we must reform it.”
Pandemic woes
The two sides have only become more entrenched over the years as the Postal Service continued to lose money.
The COVID-19 pandemic has deprived the postal service of some of its most profitable pieces of mail. Single-piece, first-class mail volume fell as much as 20% week-over-week in April and May, agency leaders told lawmakers in June. Marketing mail volumes fell by as much as 50% week-overweek during the same period.
Congress approved a $10 billion loan for the service in its economic relief package in March. Mr. Trump in April called the agency “a joke” and demanded it raise package rates by 400% before he’d authorize any dollars.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin finally issued the loan on July 29 in exchange for copies of the postal service’s 10 largest contracts with private third-party shippers such as Amazon, FedEx and UPS.
The economic relief bill passed
by House Democrats in May, the HEROES Act, pledged $25 billion for the postal service and $3.5 billion in election assistance to states.
The Republican proposal unveiled last month, the HEALS Act, included no new money for mail delivery. Last month, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Me., joined Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., to introduce legislation that called for $25 billion in emergency appropriation and the $10 billion loan to be granted with no conditions.
By the end of the month, the bill had 16 co-sponsors, including seven Republicans from largely rural states. Sen. Pat Toomey, RPa., was not a co-sponsor, issuing a statement that he would not support a large infusion of taxpayer money into the Postal Service.
“The current financial model for the Postal Service is unsustainable,” Mr. Toomey stated. “Further efforts to preserve its longterm viability must be done in a fiscally responsible way that does not shift costs to taxpayers.”
Last week, two GOP aides, speaking on background, acknowledged it is likely to be included in a negotiated relief bill.
“It is clear that neither the HEALS Act nor the HEROES Act will be the final bill, and I think the negotiators will be looking for provisions with bipartisan support like Senators Collins’ and Feinstein’s postal bill,” one of the staffers said.
A popular agency
Multiple public opinion polls have shown the U.S. Postal Service has long been — by a large margin — the most popular federal agency.
A Pew Research Center survey conducted in March, just as the pandemic unfolded, showed 91% of Americans held a favorable view of the postal service. (The Centers For Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Census Bureau were second and third at 79% and 77%, respectively.)
Pittsburgh has at times been a center of Postal Service debate.
Also beginning in 2013, the U.S. Postal Service launched a partnership with Staples, testing “mini post offices” sites retailer at some of the office supplies retail locations in Pittsburgh and three other cities. The partnership was discontinued in 2017, after campaigns by postal workers’ unions.
In 2018, about 2,000 people gathered in Pittsburgh for the American Postal Workers Union’s national convention, rallying in the August heat against a report from the Trump administration that recommended service cuts and partial privatization.
Then came an internal USPS memo, obtained by the The Washington Post last month, that detailed Mr. DeJoy’s proposals. The memo cited U.S. Steel as an example of a company that was slow to adapt to market forces and struggled to survive. “In 1975 they were the largest company in the world,” the memo stated. “They are gone.”
The Pittsburgh-based steel producer generated $13 billion in sales and employed 27,500 people at of the end of 2019, according to its annual report in April. A U.S. Steel spokesperson declined to comment on the memo other than to say, “Clearly, we are not ‘gone.’”
Last week, House Democrats demanded an investigation into Mr. DeJoy’s organizational changes. The House Oversight Committee introduced the Delivering for America Act, which would maintain current service postal standards it had in place on Jan. 1, 2020, until the COVID-19 pandemic has ended.
Chuck Pugar, president of the Pittsburgh Metro American Postal Workers Union, said last week he believed Mr. DeJoy’s directives served to slow down delivery and turn the public against postal workers.
“He’s putting into the minds of the listeners: ‘Here are your choices — go out and stand in the COVID line and wait to vote, or subject your ballot to not getting counted because of a bad postal service,’” Mr. Pugar said.
“The Postal Service has been cut to the bone in staffing for a long time,” Mr. Pugar added. “Do I know the mail’s being delayed? ... It’s happening. The frustration is there. The angst is there.”