Democratic members of the House Oversight Committee on Saturday urged President Trump to abandon plans to reform the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) after he said he was considering a “merger” for the mail service.
“Your reported efforts to dismantle the Postal Service as an independent agency would directly undermine the affordability and reliability of the U.S. postal system,” ranking member Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) and the panel’s other members wrote in the letter. “We urge you to abandon immediately any plans that would either privatize the Postal Service or undermine the independence of the Postal Service.”
The letter from Democrats follows reporting from The Washington Post that Trump was considering firing USPS’s board and absorbing the Postal Service into the Department of Commerce.
Connolly noted that such a move would require congressional approval, “which Congress would not provide.”
Unlike other entities within government, USPS is not funded by Congress but rather earns revenue from the services it provides. But those services are also paired with a mandate to reach every mailbox in the U.S. — something private companies have no obligation to do.
“Congress prescribed a clear and critical mandate for the Postal Service: to deliver efficient, reliable, and universal service to all Americans,” the Virginia Democrat continued. “Your reported plans for the Postal Service would put at risk the timely, affordable delivery of life-saving medications, mail-in ballots, important financial documents, and letters from loved ones, especially in rural or less profitable areas that the private sector refuses to service.”
He added that the shift would also not put USPS on “on a path of fiscal sustainability” but rather “it could instead subject the Postal Service and the entire mail network to political interference, shifting priorities of Administrations, and skyrocketing prices.”
Trump on Friday addressed his plans, and while he did not commit to any particular path, he did criticize the Postal Service.
“We want to have a post office that works well and doesn’t lose massive amounts of money, and we’re thinking about doing that,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “And it will be a form of a merger, but it’ll remain the Postal Service, and I think it’ll operate a lot better than it has been over the years.
“It’s been just a tremendous loser for this country, tremendous amounts of money they’ve lost,” he added. “And we think we can do something that will be very good and keep it a very similar way, but whether it’s a merger or just using some of the very talented people that we have elsewhere so it doesn’t lose so much.”
The moves also come after Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who was appointed under Trump’s first term, announced earlier this week that he would be stepping down.
