Nancy Pelosi recalls house to ‘save’ US Postal Service
The US Postal Service is known for delivering mail despite snow, rain or heat, but it faces a new foe in Donald Trump.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has recalled the US House of Representatives from its summer recess to vote this week on an act “to save” the US Postal Service.
Ms Pelosi and fellow senior Democrat Chuck Schumer on Sunday (Monday AEST) also called for Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a recent Donald Trump appointee, to appear before an “urgent hearing” of the House oversight committee.
They said that Mr DeJoy — “a Trump mega-donor — has acted as an accomplice in the President’s campaign to cheat in the election, as he launches sweeping new operational changes that degrade delivery standards”.
“This is a crisis for American democracy,” Democrat socialist senator Bernie Sanders told ABC.
Ahead of the November 3 elections in which millions of voters are expected to cast ballots by mail due to the coronavirus, Mr Trump has levelled an unprecedented attack at the USPS, opposing efforts to give the cash-strapped agency more money as part of a big new virus-related stimulus package, even as changes there have caused delays in mail delivery.
“They need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Mr Trump told Fox News on Thursday, adding, “but if they don’t get those ... that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting”.
With some states expanding mail-in options because of the pandemic, an estimated three-quarters of Americans will be able to vote from home this northern autumn. Increased mail-in voting, Mr Trump said on Saturday, would be a “catastrophe”.
Democrats expect to use the issue to mobilise voters when the party opens its national convention on Monday (Tuesday AEST) — in a virtual format — with former vice president Joe Biden slated to accept the party’s nomination on Thursday. Republicans follow a week later.
Mr Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, said the Democrats could yet obtain more postal funding if they were ready to make a deal on the stimulus package.
“If my Democrat friends are all upset about this, come back to Washington,” he told CNN.
“Put the postal funding in there” along with aid to small businesses, he said. “We’ll pass it tomorrow.”
Mr Trump has long been a critic of the postal service, but his latest charges come as he trails Mr Biden in most polls. Protesters on Saturday gathered at Mr DeJoy’s Washington home, honking horns and banging pots.
USPS spokesman David Partenheimer attributed changes at the agency to its poor financial state. “We are not slowing down election mail or any other mail,” he said. “The Postal Service is in a financially unsustainable position, stemming from substantial declines in mail volume and a broken business model.”
Congress remains deadlocked over a new stimulus bill to follow the $US2.2 trillion ($3.06 trillion) package passed in March.
The President said candidly in April that mail-in voting “doesn’t work out well for Republicans”. He has repeatedly described such ballots as prone to fraud.
But a study this year by New York University’s Brennan Centre for Justice found that “it is ... more likely for an American to be struck by lightning than to commit mail voting fraud”.
American Postal Workers Union president Mark Dimondstein said on Sunday that Mr Trump “wants to starve the Post Office to keep people from voting, that’s shameful”. The union says overtime for postal workers has reduced, and 40,000 workers have had to quarantine because of COVID-19, creating delays.
As concerns mount over the USPS’s ability to handle a surge in ballots, states are working to ensure their residents’ votes count.
Pennsylvania last week asked its supreme court to push back its deadline for accepting mail-in ballots. The Washington Post reported on Friday similar notices were sent to 45 other states and the District of Columbia.
“It’s incumbent upon congress to act and not hide behind anything else. And that’s true of people on both sides in the major political parties,” Mr Dimondstein said.
AFP
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