The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Postmaster general: Election mail will be delivered ‘fully’
Official won’t reverse some cost cuts, denies political motives.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, whose cost-cutting and operational changes have prompted widespread concern about mail-in voting, said Friday he was “extremely highly confident” the Postal Service could handle the largest vote-by-mail program in American history. He said it was “outrageous” for Democrats to suggest that he might intentionally slow ballot delivery to help President Donald Trump.
Testifying before Congress for the first time amid a sharp backlash, DeJoy, a major donor to Trump, defended many of the changes as necessary to help the Postal Service get its financial house in order. He acknowledged that the moves have slowed some mail delivery and reiterated that he would suspend his cost-cutting measures until after the election.
“There has been no changes to any policies with regard to election mail,” DeJoy said, adding, “The Postal Service is fully capable and committed to delivering the nation’s election mail fully and on time.”
Under intense pressure from Democrats, however, he refused to reverse other steps, like removing hundreds of blue mailboxes and mail sorting machines, that he said his predecessors had initiated in response to a steady decline in mail volume. He told senators
‘There has been no changes to any policies with regard to election mail. The Postal Service is fully capable and committed to delivering the nation’s election mail fully and on time.’
POSTMASTER GENERAL LOUIS DEJOY ‘These are real concerns I’m hearing. These are not manufactured. These are people who are coming forward talking about delays, talking about medicine that is not available for them.’
— SEN. GARY PETERS, D-MICH.
that he did not know about the machine removal when it began, saying it was “not a critical issue within the Postal Service.”
And he was unable to offer many specifics about how the Postal Service would ensure on-time delivery of ballots this fall, telling Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., that he would be unable to provide a detailed plan by Sunday because it was still being drafted.
DeJoy said he would continue the agency’s practice of prioritizing election mail, regardless of what postage is used, and “deploy processes and procedures that advance any election mail, in some cases ahead of first-class mail.”
Senate Democrats defended their criticism of DeJoy’s operational changes Friday after Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the committee’s Republican chairman, accused them of fabricating complaints as part of a “political hit job.”
“These are real concerns I’m hearing,” said Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the panel’s ranking Democrat. “These are not manufactured. These are people who are coming forward talking about delays, talking about medicine this is not available for them . ... This is why we’re standing up and making sure the Postal Service does what they have done (in the past)” to guarantee good service.
As DeJoy testified Friday, a coalition of six states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit against him, the Postal Service and the chair of its board of governors, Robert M.
Duncan. The attorneys general assert that DeJoy’s recent changes have resulted in widespread delays that could have a disastrous effect for voting by mail this November. His recent announcement, suspending many new initiatives, did not address several of his measures, the states claim.
Concerns about the ability of Americans to vote by mail during a pandemic have been heightened by Trump, who has criticized the Postal Service as a “joke” and renewed his attack on mail-in voting hours after DeJoy finished assuring lawmakers that the process was the Postal Service’s No. 1 priority.
“You’ll have double voting — where they send in a ballot, then they’ll go and vote,” Trump said in remarks to a conservative group of supporters in Virginia. “That’s going to be a big problem. They’ll send in their ballot and they’ll vote, too. They’ll send in the ballot. What are the chances that some states so efficiently run — ‘Oh, gee, you can’t vote, we just got your ballot last night at seven o’clock.’ I mean think of how ridiculous it is, right? Common sense.”
DeJoy said he had “never spoken to the president about the Postal Service, other than to congratulate me when I accepted the position.”
But he did not back down from his plans to radically overhaul the beleaguered Postal Service, saying he foresees “dramatic” changes after the election in November, including rate increases and new service standards in rural America, as ways to cut costs.
“We are considering dramatic changes to improve the service to the American people, yes,” DeJoy said, later adding that “I would like to be liberated on pricing.”
He also challenged lawmakers — who are debating whether to give the Postal Service a $25 billion infusion of cash — saying they should make serious legislative changes to free the Postal Service from retirement benefit obligations that Congress imposed years ago. By law, the Postal Service is required to pre-fund its retirement benefits programs, a mandate that has driven the agency tens of billions of dollars into the red and forced its leaders to contemplate costly service changes.
“If we just throw $25 billion at us this year and we don’t do anything, we’ll be back in two years,” DeJoy said, referring to an emergency approval of cash the House planned to approve today to help the Postal Service weather the coronavirus pandemic.
The postmaster general, who has been on the job fewer than 70 days, pushed back on claims that he had cut overtime for mail carriers and he defended attempts to cut down on late and extra delivery trips.
He said agency statistics when he arrived showed that 12% of the trips mail carriers made each day were running late and that thousands of extra trips were being made to account for missed mail — performances that he argued would be unacceptable at private delivery services like FedEx. Carrying out the changes had been rockier than expected, he conceded, although he initially played down the effect.