Scanlon vows to stop ‘attack’ on the postal service

To the Times:

Last week, the Delaware County Daily Times published a Sound Off plea for help from a 31year veteran letter carrier regarding serious delays in postal delivery here and across the country. Those delays are widely attributed to the actions of the new Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, a Trump donor with no postal service experience, who ordered the removal of critical equipment and implemented new work rules this summer with disastrous results.

As the Sound Off caller noted, USPS officials have yet to reverse those harmful actions, despite court orders to do so and promises that they would.

I want to thank the caller, and his/her coworkers, who have reached out to my office to alert us to how the USPS has been harmed by the actions of the new Postmaster General. Since these reports surfaced, I have been working with postal workers, their unions, and my colleagues in Congress and state officials, to stop this attack on the postal service. We have demanded information from the administration, passed legislation to provide emergency funding to USPS, consulted with former members of the USPS board of governors, and conducted oversight hearings to get to the bottom of this mess.

Last week, when we learned that the Postmaster General would be visiting our area, I invited Attorney General Josh Shapiro, members of the Pennsylvania congressional delegation, and postal workers to join me at the major postal sorting facility in our region, located in the Southwest Philadelphia portion of our district, to highlight the ongoing harm to USPS. In addition to hearing testimony from postal workers about rule changes that continue to frustrate their efforts to restore on-time delivery, we shared photos of sorting machines capable of processing hundreds of thousands of pieces of mail that have been removed from the facility and are rusting on a scrap heap out back. These directives have come straight from the top, and they are unacceptable.

Although the Trump administration continues to try to undermine the postal service, Congress, the state Attorney General, and the proud men and women who work at USPS will continue to push back. Americans rely on the USPS and deserve to get their prescriptions, their social security checks, and their business deliveries on time. Americans also deserve to vote safely and securely by mail - as they have done since the Civil War - with help, not interference, from the federal government. It is our collective priority to see this election conducted in a fair, transparent, and secure way, and do everything in our power to restore the integrity of the postal service.

Thank you to the Sound Off caller for your service to us all. Whether in rain, heat, snow, ice – or a global pandemic - our letter carriers deliver through it all, and Delaware County is so grateful for your work.

If you need support from our office, don’t hesitate to reach out at 610-626-2020 or via Scanlon. house.gov.

U.S. Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon, D-5, Swarthmore