I&I Editorial
The postmaster general is rarely a household name. Expect that to change should the Democrats lose in November. If that happens, they will try to turn Louis DeJoy into the Vladimir Putin of the 2020 elections.
DeJoy took the helm of the postal office in June, and since then the former head of New Breed Logistics has been trying to bring some semblance of fiscal order to an operation that has been losing billions of dollars for years.
“Without dramatic change, there is no end in sight, and we face an impending liquidity crisis,” DeJoy told the U.S. Postal Service’s governing board last week.
So far, the changes have been relatively modest. He’s done some reorganizing and took steps to cut back the excessive amount of overtime pay that postal carriers rack up.
As Ross Marchand noted in a recent I&I op-ed, “DeJoy must deliver on these, and other critical postal reforms, in order for the agency to be fiscally stable.”
But to hear Democrats tell it, DeJoy is engaged in “deliberate sabotage” of the upcoming elections. That’s how Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., put it. DeJoy, you see, is a Trump supporter, and so must be part of a broad conspiracy.
Democratic Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith said that “it’s hard not to be suspicious when you see the postmaster general, who is a big Trump donor, now at this exact moment taking steps that are undermining this service. Of course I’m suspicious.”
Rep. Brenda Lawrence, D-Mich., warned that “our democracy is being held in the hands of the postal service.”
Give Lawrence credit for stumbling onto the truth. Except that it’s Democrats, hoping to give themselves an advantage in November, who’ve put the election in the hands of the postal service. They are the ones who have been pushing since the spring for mandatory universal mail-in voting, on the spurious grounds that it’s needed for public health. As we noted in this space recently, it’s Democrats and their allies who are right now suing states across the nation to expand mail-in voting.
But if things go wrong, which they will, it won’t be because of Postmaster General DeJoy. It will be because Democrats put the election in the hands of an organization that is riddled with waste and that can’t be trusted to do its job.
Take a look at just a few headlines that appeared well before DeJoy took over.
- “‘Overwhelmed’ Postal Carrier Hoarded 17,000 Pieces of Mail, Officials Say”
- “A postal worker rented a storage unit to hide mail because he felt ‘pressured’ to deliver it”
- “Postal service struggles leave Bay Area residents searching for their mail”
- “3,000 Pieces of Undelivered Mail Found At DFW Postal Facility”
- “Post office searching for missing Christmas mail in Alexandria”
- “Former Fitchburg letter carrier, feeling stressed, fails to deliver 758 pieces”
- “More than 1,000 pieces of stolen mail found in late postal worker’s storage unit”
- ” Postal Service has no answer for 2018 disappearance of Neenah-Menasha mail”
- “St. Petersburg mail carrier found with 2,129 pieces of stolen mail”
- “60,000 ballots not delivered in Adams County; Duplicate ballots sent out in Weld County”
That’s to say nothing of the recent experience – before DeJoy took over – of problems with mail-in balloting. Just one example: The USPS inspector general investigation of the April 7 Wisconsin primary found that more than 3,500 absentee ballots never made it to voters, and hundreds had no postmarks.
The changes that DeJoy is implementing don’t even scratch the surface of what’s needed to fix the financial and management problems at the USPS.
It has lost $78 billion since 2007 and expects to lose $13 billion this year alone in part because of the pandemic.
An audit by the Government Accountability Office published this May declared that its business model is “not financially sustainable.”
Over the past decade — when the GAO first put the USPS on its “high risk” list — its financial picture has “worsened due to declining mail volume, increased employee compensation and benefit costs, and increased unfunded liabilities and debt.”
In normal times, Democrats can be counted on to fight any changes to USPS operations in return for the huge campaign contributions they get from postal worker unions. Since 2019, the National Association of Letter Carriers has given $890,000 to Democrats, the American Postal Workers Union $738,000, the National Rural Letter Carriers Association another $319,600, according to OpenSecrets.org. Republicans get a relative pittance from these unions.
So it’s not surprising that the Democrats’ answer to the postal service’s financial meltdown is to pump billions more in taxpayers’ subsidies into it.
But the attacks Democrats are launching now have little to do with the union cronyism. They are laying the groundwork to attack any Trump victory as illegitimate, with DeJoy replacing Vladimir Putin for “interfering” with the elections. Thus the outrageous claims that Trump’s trying to sabotage the election.
It does make one wonder why these Democrats, who are so certain that Trump will be driven from office, are so busy making excuses should he win.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Let’s just revive the Pony Express to handle the delivery of ballots. Makes about as much sense.
If they lose? That was a joke, right? They lose is a given!
One federal official is easier to demonize than 50 secretaries of state and hundreds or even thousands of local elections officials.
Maybe that’s the real reason they want vote-by-mail. If it helps them cheat, they’ll be okay with that, but even better if their failure can be blamed on one guy.
The USPS business model is not sustainable because of the pre-funding mandate for its burdensome pensions. Time for a change.
And to say that the USPS is losing because of the pandemic is as absurd as saying that a bandana mask is medically effective. If anything, there must be more traffic through the post office with more people buying and doing business remotely.
Congress itself could be at fault here. Back ten years or so ago in order to “balance” the budget/tax act/etc. the Congress came up with some extra “monies” by suddenly mandating that the postal service “fund” its retirement plans differently than other government bodies. This was a “gimmick”. I suspect a lot of the postal services financial woes may stem from this deed rather than internal problems at the postal service. Check into this..
The US Postal Service, given all of the shenanigans over the past half-century where Congress has mandated the funding of pensions and restricted the Post Office charging sufficient in postage actually to do their job, has done remarkably well on the dregs that they have been provided.
Before Congress starts handing out money to cities and states who have grossly mismanaged their finances, I would be most in favor of making the Post Office whole for a change…
After all, running a post office system is one of the powers delegated to the feds by our Constitution…Congress should at least make an attempt to assure its solvency.
This postmaster already announced no overtime for postal workers–guaranteeing that ballots won’t be sent nor returned in time to get valid results for the election. That doesn’t even consider the massive fraud that will take place. The whole thing was designed by Dems to purposely create chaos and disrupt our presidential election. No matter what the results, Dems can then whine that Trump wasn’t elected legitimately.
I see that nobody did their homework before writing this article. In 2006 the USPS made a 5 billion dollar profit. Pensions were up to date and no money was owed. Also in 2006 Congress decided to steal the profit going forward and made the Post Office pay for their pensions out to 75 years. One of the reason they did this was to help Fed Ex UPS and other companies make more money for their stock holders. Politicians don’t run anything lobbyist do.
The US Postal Service is not meant to be run like a for-profit corporation. It is a public service. Of course it should be run as efficiently as possible, but the priority is universal and timely service. Mail-in ballots have been a significant feature of US elections for many years. Why is the new head of the USPS choosing this exact moment to emphasize cost reductions over service? Ohhhhh….. because an election is going on and he and his boss think that more people voting is bad for their chances.