Sen. Rand Paul is not in favor of doling out more money to the U.S. Postal Service as it prepares to handle a record number of mail-in ballots ahead of November’s election.
“Well, you know, anybody who wants to give money to the post office, you might as well just put it into a big pile on your front lawn and burn it,” the Kentucky Republican said on Wednesday. “There’s no way to give any money to the post office to make the post office redeemable. You cannot fix the post office unless you fix their labor problem. Eighty percent of the cost of the post office is labor. About 50% of UPS’s cost are labor. And FedEx is about 38%.”
Democrats have accused President Trump’s administration of tampering with the Postal Service and slowing down the department’s operations in an attempt to deter people from casting their votes by mail during the coronavirus pandemic.
On Wednesday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she spoke with Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Trump donor, about the pause in operations.
“The Postmaster General frankly admitted that he had no intention of replacing the sorting machines, blue mailboxes and other key mail infrastructure that have been removed and that plans for adequate overtime, which is critical for the timely delivery of mail, are not in the works,” Pelosi said in a statement. “All of these changes directly jeopardize the election and disproportionately threaten to disenfranchise voters in communities of color. At the same time, we are highly concerned that the slowdown of the delivery of medicines to veterans is not being sufficiently addressed.”
Earlier this week, DeJoy announced he will order the halt of controversial changes to the Postal Service’s operating procedures until after the election.
“To avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail, I am suspending these initiatives until after the election is concluded,” he said. DeJoy had initially said the changes were cost-cutting measures taken to offset losses the Postal Service endures each year.
“You can’t run a business with 80% of your costs being labor when your competitors have much lower costs,” Paul said. “So really, in the end, just giving money to the post office is giving money to an operation that lost $8 billion last year. So, giving them $10 billion, it’ll be gone within a year’s time. It’s a foolhardy notion. And when they call it skinny, to me, it’s just Democrat-lite. And I didn’t run for office to be just slightly less bad than the Democrats.”
Democrats want $25 billion in additional funding for the Postal Service and are expected to vote on a measure on Saturday.
“We want them to vote for this. That’s why I held back on some suggestions people want,” Pelosi told her colleagues on Monday.
DeJoy is set to testify Friday before a Republican-led Senate committee.
“Why are Republicans allowing the Democrats to have ridiculous Post Office hearings on Saturday & Monday, just before and during our Convention,” tweeted Trump, incorrectly noting the day of the Senate hearing. “Let them hold them NOW (during their Convention) or after our Convention is over. Always playing right into their hands!”
Paul, one of the more fiscally conservative members of Congress, said the only way he’d vote in favor of more funding for the Postal Service is if the department went through a hiring freeze.
“They would have to gradually lower their employment significantly,” Paul said. “There’s a third less overall mail going through the post office in the last 14 years. They need to have a third less employees. A few years ago, they started, through attrition, mainly by letting the older employees not be replaced. They were getting smaller. But they’ve actually started growing again in the last year or two.”
