Yesterday, House Democrats introduced the Delivering for America Act in hopes to halt the Trump administration’s focus on ‘deliberately sabotaging’ the U.S. Postal Service. This act also prevents any changes to the USPS until the end of the Covid-19 pandemic.
House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) sponsored the act saying: “Our Postal Service should not become an instrument of partisan politics, but instead must be protected as a neutral, independent entity that focuses on one thing and one thing only—delivering the mail. Millions of people rely on the Postal Service every day to communicate, to access critical medications, and to vote.”
Common Dreams reports this legislation would prohibit:
- Any change in the nature of postal services which will generally affect service on a nationwide or substantially nationwide basis;
- Any revision of service standards;
- Any closure or consolidation any post office or reduction of facility hours; Any prohibition on payments of overtime pay to Postal Service officers or employees;
- Any change that would prevent the Postal Service from meeting its service standards or cause a decline in measurements of performance relative to those service standards;
- Any change that would have the effect of delaying mail, allowing for the non-delivery of mail to a delivery route, or increasing the volume of undelivered mail.
The current new head of the U.S. Postal Service Postmaster General (PMG) Louis DeJoy, who happens to be a supporter and donor to President Donald Trump, has had the USPS on the chopping block since mid-July.
According to the Washington Post, DeJoy told employees to leave mail behind at distribution centers if it delayed letter carriers from their routes. This action could threaten the absentee ballot process when this option is necessary during the time of a pandemic. “The deliberate delaying of Americans’ mail delivery would be a stunning act of sabotage against our Postal Service,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-N.J.).
With this new act now on the table, changes will hopefully be made to stop DeJoy’s destructive choices. Common Dreams states this legislation comes as DeJoy is facing a Senate investigation and growing calls to step down over his sweeping policy changes.
Justin Wise from The Hill reports, the USPS has faced mounting financial challenges, which have been compounded by the pandemic. The agency reported last Friday that it lost more than $2 billion between April and June, with DeJoy attributing the losses to “substantial declines in mail volume” and a “broken business model.”
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