DeJoy Falsely Claims That Gutting USPS is the Only Path Forward

By Joey Katzenell

Chances are you’ve heard about Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s disastrous 60-page “Delivering for America” (DFA) consolidation plan launched in 2021. DeJoy released the plan shortly after being appointed by Trump, who called for fixing then privatizing USPS. Unsurprisingly, DFA includes massive network consolidations, cuts to work hours, historic postage rate hikes, and slower delivery service standards. Even if you don’t follow postal news as closely as this author, you or someone you know has likely experienced the effects of the changes – in just three years, DeJoy’s 10-year plan has caused people across the country higher prices for slower service, missing and delayed mail, post office closures and reduced hours, understaffing, and massive network change implementation issues in places like Virginia, Atlanta, and Houston, just to name a few. 

After recent months of bipartisan pressure from Congress and stakeholders to address the mail delays wreaking havoc on communities from coast to coast, and numerous complaints from postal workers, DeJoy finally agreed to pause his plan until after the 2024 election. It wasn’t a total fix, by any means, but it was progress in the right direction. But DeJoy’s out-of-touch Washington Post op-ed on July 8 titled, “We’re fixing the Postal Service. We can’t stop now.” clearly shows that he is not giving up on his plan yet. In it, he falsely claims “‘Delivering for America’ is the only comprehensive strategy in existence that can save the Postal Service.” 

The truth is that DeJoy’s “Delivering for America” is not the only plan in existence, and his death by a thousand cuts approach will not save the Postal Service. There are other proposed plans that would allow USPS to expand to offer other essential public services while still meeting its universal service obligation to provide reliable, on-time mail delivery services at a reasonable price to every community in the country. In addition to a truly forward-thinking plan like the People’s Postal Agenda, Congress can do its part to untie the Postal Service’s hands by rolling back a preposterous 2006 law that forbade USPS from offering new products it wasn’t already offering. 

In 2021, a group of postal workers, community leaders, and public interest advocates came together to envision the People’s Postal Agenda, to bring much needed revenue to the post office and increase access to essential public services in over 30,000 USPS locations across every ZIP code. New services in The People’s Postal Agenda include no-fee checking and savings accounts, hunting and fishing licenses, local food delivery services, and even aide in the national transition to renewable energy by offering public EV charging stations.The plan would bring in much-needed revenue for USPS without cutting jobs or increasing postage prices, contrary to DeJoy’s plan. 

Over a decade ago, the Inspector General of USPS released a report exploring new revenue for USPS titled “Providing Non-Bank Financial Services for the Underserved.” According to the IG, not only would this  provide USPS with $8.9 billion in revenue– and that’s just from a small set of non-bank financial services that could be piloted without any change of law, like low-fee ATMs, bill payment, check cashing, and sending wire transfers overseas– but would also give the nearly 10 million unbanked and underbanked households, predominantly families of color, in the country greater access to basic financial services. 

The thing is, the people most affected by the disastrous changes in DeJoy’s 10-year plan are rural, Black and Indigenous communities, veterans, and seniors that rely on the post office to receive medications, election mail, Social Security checks, and other essentials that are harder to access in rural and under-served areas. On-time mail and package delivery is not a luxury – it’s a matter of good health, voting rights, and financial security – particularly for seniors and people with disabilities and limited mobility. 

Last Friday, the Washington Post published letters to the editor including two responses pushing back against DeJoy’s op-ed. Notable is a response from Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi and Public Citizen’s Robert Weissman, calling DeJoy’s op-ed a “stunning display of denial.” Krishnamoorthi and Weissman urged for a change in postal leadership  saying, “Mr. DeJoy has attempted to run the Postal Service like a hedge fund manager intent on gutting an enterprise to show short-term revenue improvements.” The authors pointed out DeJoy is not up to the task of leading the USPS that communities across the country need: “America needs the Postal Service for the long term; it is an institution that binds the country together, providing critical deliveries on items like Social Security checks, medications and mail-in ballots. We need investments and innovation, not service cuts.’

DeJoy has certainly been made aware of these alternative plans as lawmakers and people across the country have flooded his inbox with letters pleading for solutions to the disastrous current conditions. Unfortunately for the people DeJoy is meant to serve, he is still trying and failing at running the Post Office like a business instead of the public service institution that it has been and was always intended to be. 

Ultimately, the only way forward for USPS is to grow and innovate, not to retrench and wither.