House passes $25B cushion for post office
Bill would reverse changes blamed for mail slowdown
WASHINGTON — With debate over mail delays, the House approved legislation in a rare Saturday session that would reverse recent changes in Postal Service operations and send $25 billion to shore up the agency ahead of the November election.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi recalled lawmakers to Washington over objections from Republicans dismissing the action as a stunt. President Donald Trump urged a no-vote, including in a Saturday tweet, railing against mail-in ballots expected to surge in the covid-19 crisis.
“Don’t pay any attention to what the president is saying, because it is all designed to suppress the vote,” Pelosi said at the Capitol.
Pelosi called the Postal Service the nation’s “beautiful thread” connecting Americans and said voters should “ignore” the president’s threats.
The daylong session came as an uproar over mail disruptions puts the Postal Service at the center of the nation’s election year, with Americans rallying around one of the nation’s oldest and
more popular institutions. Millions of people are expected to opt for mail-in ballots to avoid polling places during the coronavirus pandemic.
Ahead of voting, the president tweeted, “This is all another HOAX.”
He accused Democrats of backing a universal vote-bymail “scam” in “violation of everything that our Country stands for.”
More than two dozen Republicans broke with the president and backed the bill, which passed 257-150. Democrats led approval, but the legislation is likely to stall in the GOP-held Senate. The White House said the president would veto it.
Facing a backlash over operational changes, new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy testified Friday in the Senate that his “No. 1 priority” is to ensure election mail arrives on time.
But DeJoy said he would not restore the cuts to mailboxes and sorting equipment that have already been made, and he could not provide senators with a plan for handling the ballot crush for the election. DeJoy is set to return Monday to testify before the House Oversight Committee.
“The American people don’t want anyone messing with the post office,” said Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., chair of the Oversight Committee and author of the bill. “They just want their mail.”
But Republicans countered that complaints about mail delivery disruptions are overblown, and that no emergency funding is needed right now.
“It’s a silly, silly bill,” said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla.
BROADER BILL POSSIBLE
Despite the postmaster general’s vow that election mail will arrive on time, Democrats remain skeptical. Maloney’s committee Saturday released internal Postal Service documents warning about steep declines and delays in a range of mail services since early July, shortly after DeJoy took the helm.
He acknowledged at the Senate hearing that there has been a “dip” in service, but disputed reports of widespread problems. The Board of Governors of the Postal Service announced a bipartisan committee to oversee mail voting.
The bill would reverse the cuts by prohibiting any changes made after January, and provide funds to the agency.
In a memo to House Republicans, leaders derided the legislation as a postal “conspiracy theory” act. Many GOP lawmakers echoed such sentiments during a lively floor debate.
“I like the post office, I really do,” said Rep. Glenn Grothman, R-Wis. But he said, “We have no crisis here.”
Nevertheless, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is eyeing a $10 billion postal rescue as part of the next covid-19 relief package. While Trump has said he wants to block emergency funding for the agency, the White House has said it would be open to more postal funding as part of a broader bill.
Hundreds of lawmakers returned to Washington for the weekend session, but dozens cast votes by proxy under House rules that allow them to stay away during the covid-19 crisis. Another lawmaker, Rep. Dan Meuser, R-Pa., announced Saturday he had tested positive for the virus.
Democratic leaders had also been under pressure from more than 100 rank-and-file lawmakers to use Saturday’s session to address other elements of the coronavirus relief negotiations as well.
Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, was on Capitol Hill meeting with GOP House leader Kevin McCarthy and other lawmakers, according to a Republican aide granted anonymity to discuss the private sessions.
“If you really want to help Americans, how about passing relief for small businesses and unemployment assistance ALONG with postal funding?” Meadows wrote in a tweet. “We agree on these. There’s NO reason not to deliver relief for Americans right now.”
ELECTION IN FOCUS
The Postal Service has been struggling financially under a decline in mail volume for many years, covid-19-related costs and a rare and cumbersome congressional requirement to fund in advance its retiree health care benefits.
For many, the Postal Service provides a lifeline, delivering not just cards and letters but also prescription drugs, financial statements and other items that are especially needed by mail during the pandemic.
The postal board of governors, appointed by Trump, selected DeJoy to take the job as postmaster general. A GOP donor, he previously owned a logistics business that was a longtime Postal Service contractor. He maintains significant financial stakes in companies that do business or compete with the agency, raising conflict-of-interest questions.
In a statement, the Postal Service said DeJoy has made all required financial disclosures, but he might have to divest some holdings if conflicts arise.
Millions of Americans in conservative and liberal states alike cast their ballots through the Postal Service in 2016 and 2018. Trump himself plans to do so this year but makes a distinction between absentee voting through the mail and programs overseen by Republicans and Democrats that proactively send ballots to all voters.
Saturday’s measure, put forward by Democratic leaders, would also require the Postal Service to prioritize the delivery of all election-related mail.
Most Republicans in the House opposed the $25 billion in taxpayer funding Saturday after DeJoy, facing intense backlash and with the vote looming, announced last week that he would temporarily halt the removal of blue mailboxes and sorting machines, as well as changes to post office hours and to mail delivery operations until after Nov. 3 out of an abundance of caution.
In testimony before the Senate on Friday, DeJoy reiterated that pledge and said ensuring successful mail-in voting would be the agency’s “No. 1 priority.” He called Democrats’ assertion that he was working with Trump to hinder the program “outrageous” and testified that he planned to continue the agency’s practice of prioritizing election mail.
More conservative Republicans accused Democrats of continuing to fan hyperbolic and unsupported theories of a conspiracy overseen by Trump to sabotage the election for their own political gain.
“Like the Russia hoax and the impeachment sham, the Democrats have manufactured another scandal for political purposes,” said Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, the top Republican on the oversight panel.
A RURAL LIFELINE
Republicans have long sought changes to have the agency run more like a private company, and Trump often complains the Postal Service should be charging Amazon and other companies higher rates for package deliveries. The founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, also owns The Washington Post.
Others say the Postal Service is not expected to be solely a money-making enterprise, often delivering to far-flung places where it is not efficient to operate.
Among the Republicans bucking their leadership Saturday were moderates, representatives of heavily rural districts that rely on the mail for basic services and several lawmakers fighting for reelection this fall.
“We should be preserving and enhancing USPS delivery standards and services, not implementing operational changes that could delay delivery times and undermine quality services that every American depends on,” said one of them, Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa.
More rural residents also are elderly or lack broadband service, making it harder for them to handle bills electronically. The letter carriers traversing country roads often have a personal connection with their customers.
The Postal Service is “a really big issue,” said Betsy Huber, president of the 150,000-member National Grange, the nation’s oldest agricultural and rural public-interest organization. “Our members are very concerned. They’re contacting us: What are you doing to save the post office?”
One way the postal slowdown has hit farmers is a breakdown in a century-old link in the supply chain for smaller poultry producers.
Thousands of baby chicks shipped to New England farmers have arrived dead in recent months, a problem Democratic Rep. Chellie Pingree has highlighted after many complaints from constituents in her rural Maine district. Newborn chicks can survive 72 hours without food or water and have been shipped by mail since 1918.
“In agricultural operations, it’s not at all uncommon to receive chicks through the mail, honeybees through the mail and even beneficial insects like ladybugs at organic farms,” said Pingree, who owns a small organic farm. “It’s also how you might get the part for your tractor when it breaks down and you need it the next day. I guarantee you it’s not a FedEx truck that’s pulling up at the farm at the end of a dirt road: It’s the mail truck.”
MCCONNELL ADAMANT
Many Senate Republicans — including moderate senators facing tough races in November — are supportive of granting the agency a direct appropriation, albeit with some policy stipulations to address its long-term business model. Congress provided $10 billion in loan authority for the agency this spring that it has yet to use.
But McConnell said plainly Saturday that he did not plan to bring up a standalone bill in the Senate when lawmakers are at a stalemate over broader coronavirus relief legislation.
“The facts show the USPS is equipped to handle this election, and if a real need arises, Congress will meet it,” he said in a statement. “The Senate will absolutely not pass stand-alone legislation for the Postal Service while American families continue to go without more relief.”
The Democratic legislation would amount to an extraordinary intervention. Though it is a government entity explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, the modern Postal Service functions as a self-sustaining business that raises funds through postal products, not from taxpayers.
Democrats’ $25 billion comes with no strings attached, but their bill would effectively bar Postal Service leaders from making any changes that “impede prompt, reliable, and efficient service” through at least January. It would reverse changes already put in place.
By imposing strict requirements until the end of the pandemic, it would, if approved, also effectively block the postmaster general from making more sweeping changes he has planned after Election Day that Democrats generally oppose.
Information for this article was contributed by Lisa Mascaro, Matthew Daly, Anthony Izaguirre and Christina A. Cassidy of The Associated Press; by Nicholas Fandos and Emily Cochrane of The New York Times; and by Mike Dorning and Nancy Ognanovich of Bloomberg News.