What We Learned From the Senate Hearing on the Postal Service

The evidence points to a failure of business management.

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Postmaster General Louis DeJoy appeared before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Friday. The timing was seemingly intended to get a Republican-run committee to set the narrative before House Democrats got their crack at DeJoy on Monday. Still, some damning information about the postal slowdown did come out at the hearing, which points to the failures of trying to run public services like a business.

Republicans tried to paint reports about significant mail delays, dismantled sorting machines, and disappearing mailboxes as part of a conspiracy theory intended to demonize the Trump administration before the election. (Trump’s own words about trying to stop mail-in balloting are relevant here.) But DeJoy didn’t really contest that mail has slowed down since he made operational changes to force mail to leave production plants on a set schedule. “Unfortunately, our production processing within the plants did not align with this schedule,” DeJoy said, leading to mail being left behind. Restrictions on overtime, which DeJoy denied but which have been thoroughly documented by postal workers, led to mail piling up.

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Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), the ranking Democrat on the committee, showed a chart of the Eastern region (which includes much of the mid-Atlantic and Appalachian states), where on-time mail delivery bumps along in a fairly narrow range for months, only to fall precipitously in the middle of July, after DeJoy implemented the changes. DeJoy tried to blame the delays on a lack of personnel because of quarantines and sickness from the pandemic. But that does not square with Peters’s chart. The pandemic started in March; delivery only began to be affected in July.

When Peters asked point-blank whether the changes “have delayed the mail, and that has hurt people,” DeJoy agreed. That’s all you need to know; the partisan countercharges melt away when the postmaster general admits that his actions stopped mail from being delivered on time.

It’s important to understand that this is a function of cost-cutting business management style being overlaid on a public service, leading to an inability to perform the service. The Postal Service has allegedly been dysfunctional for years, to hear Republicans on the committee tell it. Yet it typically got the mail out on time, building expectations and trust in the eyes of the public.

DeJoy came in with the attitude of running the Postal Service like FedEx or UPS, with rigid delivery schedules that mismatched with the way the post offices in the field operate. Even Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio was forced to say, “When the production doesn’t meet the transportation schedule, there should be some effort to align the two.” Ya think?

Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) asked if DeJoy conducted any analysis on how this bull-in-a-china-shop approach would affect seniors or veterans waiting for medicine, or renters sending monthly rent payments and expecting prompt delivery. DeJoy replied, “The analysis we did is that if we moved the mail on schedule, on-time delivery would be improved.” In other words, no, he had no idea about the impact of his policies and the potential (now realized) for a breakdown, and failed to take into account the critical nature of this essential national infrastructure.

We’re living with the results. Chicks are arriving dead to farmers due to delays (baby chicks have long been delivered through the mail). Patients are rationing their drugs. And people are concerned about election-related mail, even though the Postal Service should theoretically have no problem whatsoever handling that level of volume.

Cutting the sorting machines also reflects this corporate America mindset. Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) pointed out that there’s only one sorting machine now in her entire state, and if it breaks down, as it did just a day earlier, that makes mail delivery impossibly burdensome. Slashing infrastructure to the bone, in other words, creates hidden risk that can magnify the slightest disruption. DeJoy is taking his “just in time” bare-bones logistics mindset to an essential service that needs redundancy in the system in order to ensure proper delivery. He’s putting cost control ahead of the job function.

As for election mail, DeJoy’s comments were inconsistent with the letters sent by his general counsel to 46 states. He promised that all election-related mail would be treated like first-class mail and sent promptly. But the letters warned states that if they only paid marketing mail rates to send ballots to voters, they would take longer to reach the destination. The letters explicitly recommend that states pay more to ship ballots, to ensure first-class service.

DeJoy is taking his “just in time” bare-bones logistics mindset to an essential service that needs redundancy in the system in order to ensure proper delivery.

My view is that this was done to create doubt in the minds of election officials, and give them an excuse to minimize their shipments, citing the higher costs. Even if the Postal Service is treating election mail as first class on the ground, the letters could be enough in states making decisions on whether to send ballots to all voters to stop them from doing so. Plus, as Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) said, the history of voter suppression and Trump’s own words couldn’t help but create skepticism given the timing of the mail slowdown and the forthcoming election.

Almost nothing from the bombshell hearing yesterday with former USPS Board of Governors vice chair David Williams, which detailed Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s role in strong-arming the agency into policy changes, was discussed. Peters did ask DeJoy whether he spoke to Mnuchin about policy changes. DeJoy gave a long pause and then said, “I told him I was working on a plan.” Already we’re hearing about unusual one-on-one meetings between Mnuchin and members of the Board of Governors before the DeJoy hiring. (Mnuchin has denied involvement.) The House hearing should drill down on this more.

It’s disappointing that Kamala Harris, who sits on this committee, decided to skip it, citing her role as the vice-presidential nominee. This hearing needed a strong questioner, which Harris has proven to be in the past. Too many Democrats gave speeches about constituent complaints about mail. So much of the Democratic convention highlighted the postal slowdown and the threat to the election. Harris’s vice-presidential nominating speech included the refrain “We’ve gotta do the work.” Why didn’t she on Friday?

One thing is clear: DeJoy’s “business acumen,” as praised by Kentucky Republican Rand Paul, was the entire problem. Running universal public services like a business hurts people. Now we have a major real-world example.

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