WPBN: U.S. Senator Roger Marshall used the annoyance of Kansans, particularly Dana from El Dorado, Mike from Topeka, and Stacy from Marysville, to convey depressing messages to the country’s postmaster general over the struggling U.S. Postal Service.
The Kansas Republican questioned Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who assumed the top USPS position in 2020, during a recent meeting of the U.S. Senate Governmental Affairs Committee in Washington, D.C. DeJoy has been under fire for six postal rate increases since 2021, the decommissioning of high-speed sorting machines, the formation of larger regional processing centers that impeded delivery to rural clients, and the uneven handling of first-class mail.
“We asked some folks back home, if you could be in front of the postmaster general, what questions would they ask you,” Marshall stated to DeJoy. The senator said Stacy and Mike proposed the same query. “What is justifying the consistent price increases with no change or improvement in delivery time or service?”
Before he was chosen by the Board of Governors of the Postal Service, DeJoy claimed that mail-delivery service was failing.
“Senator, we had a defective pricing model for 20 years,” DeJoy stated. “Mail volume was cut in half and we weren’t allowed to raise our prices to accommodate that.”
A U.S. first-class stamp cost one cent in 1863 and didn’t reach the five-cent mark for a hundred years. In 2019, the cost of a standard postage stamp increased to 50 cents. In 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2024, the price of a forever stamp increased to 58 cents, 60 cents, 63 cents, 66 cents, 68 cents, and 73 cents, respectively, under DeJoy.
Before delivery numbers significantly improve, the Postal Service’s financial trajectory needs to stabilize, according to DeJoy. Adjustments had to be made at the workplace, he added.
” I have my people, 640,000 people, that need to learn how to operate like Fed Ex and UPS,” according to the postmaster. “That’s the only way we survive.”
Half of Kansans are let down
Dana from El Dorado would have questioned the postmaster general about why rural mail was no longer delivered on time, according to Marshall. Anywhere in the United States, she longed for delivery days that were two or three days.
According to DeJoy, the USPS set the regular delivery time in 2021 at five days instead of the impractical three-day target. In an effort to meet the three-day deadline, he added, the Postal Service was spending $3.5 billion flying mail across the nation.
“We put everything on a truck on a ground service. We’ve taken $1.5 billion out of our transportation budget,” DeJoy stated.
According to Marshall, a survey was distributed to roughly 400,000 Kansans to gauge their opinions regarding mail service. Over 50% of those surveyed in Kansas claimed that their mail service was unreliable. Almost 70% reported having personally dealt with delays in the previous 12 months.
Confession from DeJoy: “We have issues in Kansas. I’m working a strategy specifically to enhance the service in Kansas. I recognize it’s there, and we’re going to fix it.”
Although Marshall expressed his belief that DeJoy wished to improve the system, he asked the postmaster general to clarify the reasons behind the opposition to reform.
“I think there’s a romance with an organization that long ago lost its ability to do the service that everybody expected,” DeJoy stated. “That’s the issue here.”
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How about Winchester?
In order for the city of Winchester in Jefferson County to get a post office for the first time since October 2020, Marshall asked DeJoy to promise to finish work on a contract. Last July, the senator wrote to DeJoy over Winchester’s lack of a post office. DeJoy stated throughout the hearing that he wasn’t sure he could commit.
According to DeJoy, Congress has historically imposed “significant unfunded mandates” on the Postal Service. He claimed that Congressmen were reluctant to support his proposals for price increases, shortened post office hours, and a slower delivery of first-class mail. Members of the U.S. House, he added, had pleaded with him not to impose unpopular measures on their congressional district.
“We’re also delivering 400 million pieces of mail and packages a day, so it would have been easier for me to build a new postal service than to transition this one,” DeJoy stated.
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DeJoy has been charged with conflicts of interest and manipulating mail-in voting to skew the results of the 2020 election while he was postmaster general.
He has also received praise for providing 500 million COVID-19 test kits over the mail, ensuring the adoption of a bipartisan Postal Service reform law, and deciding to reverse course and switch the Postal Service’s fleet to electric vehicles.
