At this point, it should come as no surprise that the vast majority of Congressional Republicans have responded to the Trump administration’s gutting of the U.S. Postal Service with near silence.
The president openly admitted last week that he is blocking additional funding to the USPS to undermine its ability to handle the coming surge of mail-in votes this fall. U.S. mail delivery has also slowed down dramatically nationwide since his handpicked postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, a major GOP donor who has been in frequent communication with the Republican National Committee, began instituting a raft of new policies for reasons of “efficiency.” These have included cutting overtime pay for postal workers, removing sorting machines from postal facilities, and eliminating mail boxes.
Yet despite the unique threat these moves have posed to American democracy, the only GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill to speak out are those facing competitive re-elections this fall, such as Montana Senator Steve Daines and Maine Senator Susan Collins.
Collins is in a particularly precarious position; a July poll released by Colby College showed her trailing her Democratic opponent, Maine House Speaker Sara Gideon, by five points. Last Thursday, Collins sent a letter to DeJoy asking him to “address” the mail delivery delays being across the nation. “I share the goal of putting the USPS back on a financially sustainable path,” she wrote. “However, this goal cannot be achieved by shortchanging service to the public.”
As it turns out, Collins is actually one of the members of Congress most responsible for the Postal Service’s devastation. Long before DeJoy started manipulating the USPS, Collins was at the forefront of a bill that crippled the agency’s finances.
In 2005, she sponsored and introduced legislation, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA), that required the USPS to pre-pay the next 50 years worth of health and retirement benefits for all of its employees—a rule that no other federal agency must follow. As chair of the Senate oversight panel at the time, she shepherded the bill’s passage, along with her House GOP counterpart Tom Davis, during a lame-duck session of Congress. It passed by a voice vote without any objections—a maneuver that gave members little time to consider what they were doing.
Hellbound and Down 