‘Ignore’ Trump, Pelosi says as House passes postal bill
WASHINGTON — The House fiercely debated Saturday before passing a bill to send $25 billion in emergency funds to shore up the United States Post Office ahead of the November election.
Lawmakers met in a rare weekend session as Speaker Nancy Pelosi recalled them to Washington over objections from Republicans who decried the move as a stunt.
President Donald Trump often rails against mail-in ballots, including in a Saturday tweet, and has said he wants to block extra funds for the Postal Service.
“Don’t pay any attention to what the president is saying, because it is all designed to suppress the vote,” Pelosi said during a press conference at the Capitol.
The Democratic bill, in addition to the funding, would reverse changes that have slowed service until after November’s election.
The measure would require the Postal Service to prioritize the delivery of all election-related mail and grant the beleaguered agency a rare $25 billion infusion to cover revenue lost because of the coronavirus pandemic and ensure it has the resources to address what is expected to be the largest vote-by-mail operation in the nation’s history.
As written, the bill appeared unlikely to move through the Republican-controlled Senate. The White House pledged a veto because administration officials see the bill as overly prescriptive and costly.
Democrats framed Saturday’s action as an emergency intervention into the affairs of an independent agency to protect vital mail and package services that have seen significant delays this summer as the new postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, moved swiftly to cut costs to close a yawning budget gap. They said it was also necessary to instill confidence in American voters that the agency would safeguard their ballots despite near daily attacks by President Trump on mail-in voting.
“This is not a partisan issue,” Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York and the lead author of the bill, said Saturday, as she released Postal Service statistics documenting the slowdown in delivery since early July. “It makes absolutely no sense to impose these kinds of dangerous cuts in the middle of a pandemic and just months before the elections in November.”
Most Republicans in the House were opposed after DeJoy, facing intense backlash and with the vote looming, announced last week 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 he planned to continue the agency’s practice of prioritizing election mail.
He is scheduled to testify again Monday before the House Oversight and Reform Committee.
The decision to recall lawmakers back to the Capitol underscored just how high the political and electoral stakes have become around the operations of a usually humdrum federal service, especially in the eyes of Democrats. Even if it does not become law, they reason, the vote will help elevate the issue in the eyes of regular Americans and further tarnish Trump.
Postal leaders have been warning for months that the sharp decline in mail caused by the pandemic could jeopardize the solvency of an agency that has struggled to turn a profit. But when DeJoy, a Trump donor and former logistics executive, introduced measures to cut down on transportation costs and overtime this summer — leading to substantial delivery delays of vital items like medicines, checks and even chicks — Democrats and postal unions began to warn that the Trump administration may be moving to destabilize the Postal Service during an election year and aid its private competitors.
Trump has repeatedly derided the Postal Service as a “joke” and spent months railing against mail-in voting with claims about ballot safety and fraud.
Adding to their worries, the changes coincided with the long-planned removal of hundreds of blue postal collection boxes across the country and the decommissioning of mail-sorting machines, part of a regular practice to adjust to the steady decline of mail.
Some Republican lawmakers have joined Democrats in voicing concern over the slowdowns and demanding assurances from DeJoy and others that the Postal Service will be able to carry out the vote-bymail initiatives.
But after DeJoy’s reversal and presentation at a hearing before a Senate panel on Friday, they said they were satisfied and accused Democrats of continuing to fan hyperbolic and unsupported theories of a conspiracy overseen by Mr. Trump to sabotage the election for their own political gain.