Under pressure, postmaster general calls for changes to mail delivery

Many congressional Democrats, upset with the Postal Service since DeJoy was named postmaster general last year, are calling for his ouster.

• By Brian Naylor/NPR

(Washington) — If your mail has not been showing up some days, or you’re getting second notices on the bills you thought you’d paid, you’re not alone. The U.S. Postal Service has been beset by continuing delays in delivering the mail.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy apologized for those delays in testimony before the House Oversight Committee Wednesday, but warned the postal system was “in a death spiral” and needs legislation to help restore it to financial stability.

“My message is that the status quo should be acceptable to no one,” DeJoy told the panel.

Shortly after DeJoy testified, President Biden announced three nominees to the Postal Service’s Board of Governors, the body that runs the USPS and has the power to appoint — and replace — the postmaster general. Lawmakers who oppose DeJoy have been pushing for Biden to take such an action.

DeJoy is developing a 10-year strategic plan to address its problems, and is discussing the proposal before the House oversight committee Wednesday.

He said the service lost more than $9 billion last year, and owes some $80 billion in unfunded liabilities because of a congressionally imposed mandate that it prepay the health care costs of its future retirees.

DeJoy is working with lawmakers on legislation that would end that requirement and place retirees with in the Medicare program.

DeJoy gave few details of the strategic plan, which he said would be unveiled in the next two weeks. But he responded to questions from lawmakers concerned over reports that among the provisions is a plan to extend some first class mail delivery times. He said the current three- to five-day standard for delivering first class mail has not been met “for years.”

In a testy exchange with Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., DeJoy said, “You can sit here and think I’m bringing all this damage to the Postal Service” but that “the place was operationally faulty because of lack of investment and lack of ability to move forward, which is what we’re trying to do.”

Asked by Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., how much longer he intended to stay as postmaster general, DeJoy responded: “A long time. Get used to me.”

DeJoy’s 10-year plan is already drawing criticism from congressional Democrats and some of the Post Office’s biggest customers.

“The standard for the Postal Service has been the mail gets delivered on time 96% of the time,” Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., told NPR ahead of the hearing. “But what we’re seeing nationally is roughly 80%, and in some areas considerably less than that. In Detroit, for example, it’s roughly 74%. So that’s still an unacceptable standard.”

Peters, who chairs the Senate committee that oversees the Postal Service, was one of more than 30 Democratic senators who wrote to DeJoy last week, asking for an explanation of the poor on-time delivery rates.

Many congressional Democrats, upset with the Postal Service since DeJoy was named postmaster general last year, are calling for his ouster. Peters isn’t there yet, but says he has “concerns about his performance to date. I think the numbers speak for themselves, but my focus right now is to make sure that we appoint a full complement of the Board of Governors.”

Biden took a step toward that by announcing three nominees on Wednesday: a former lawyer for the American Postal Workers Union, an elections expert and advocate for vote-by-mail, and a former deputy postmaster general.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., called the action “a positive first step toward restoring some balance and integrity at the Board of Governors.” But in her statement she also said the president should go even further to replace all members of the board, which contains nine governors.

As for DeJoy’s 10-year plan, the Washington Post reported earlier this month that it would include slowing the delivery of some local first class mail.

Paul Steidler, senior fellow at the Lexington Institute, says “degrading” first class mail is a terrible idea. “You shouldn’t even call it first class mail if it takes three days for something to get a short distance.”

Steidler says it’s the poor and the elderly who are hurt most by slower mail deliveries. “There’s going to be greater instances of court notices not being received on time, payments to credit card companies not getting in on time and penalties being assessed,” Steidler says, “and it’s completely unnecessary.”

There is also concern that DeJoy will propose raising postage rates to put the service on sounder financial footing. Michael Plunkett, president of PostCom, a trade association for large mailers, says that idea makes no sense.

“Customers of the Postal Service have been experiencing the worst service in decades in the last couple of months,” he says. “It seems to me to be short sighted and perhaps imprudent to plan on a large price increase in the middle of a pretty significant economic recession when your customers are extremely dissatisfied with the level of service they’ve been experiencing.”

In a statement before Wednesday’s testimony, DeJoy said, “This work is not only needed, it is long overdue. As we finalize our plan we look forward to sharing more details in the coming weeks.”