House Oversight Committee Democrats are panicking over comments President Donald Trump made Friday about reforming the U.S. Postal Service.
While Trump has not established a specific plan, he criticized the Postal Service and talked about how it might be improved upon during the swearing in of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
“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.”
Following his remarks, Democrat members of the House Oversight Committee sent a letter to Trump urging him to abandon any plans to reform USPS, the Hill reported.
“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 Rep. 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 also followed reporting from the Washington Post that the 45th and 47th president is weighing firing USPS’s board and absorbing USPS into the Department of Commerce.
Connolly countered in the letter that such a change would require congressional cooperation, “which Congress would not provide.”
While USPS is not funded by Congress and earns revenue from its services, it is mandated to reach every single mailbox in the United States, “something private companies have no obligation to do,” according to the report.
“Congress prescribed a clear and critical mandate for the Postal Service: to deliver efficient, reliable, and universal service to all Americans,” Connolly 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.”
Connolly further argued that reforming USPS would not put the independent agency “on a path of fiscal sustainability,” but could instead “subject the Postal Service and the entire mail network to political interference, shifting priorities of Administrations, and skyrocketing prices.”
Trump’s comment and the Democrats’ letter also come after Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who was appointed during Trump’s first administration, announced earlier this week that he is stepping down.
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