GOP senator to DeJoy: I will 'kill' your plan to reform USPS

A Republican senator told the head of the U.S. Postal Service on Thursday that he would do everything he could to prevent the agency leader from instituting one of his key reforms, setting up a key divide between Congress and USPS. 

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy faced bipartisan pushback from members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, with multiple exchanges turning testy. DeJoy vehemently defended his efforts and said the senators standing in his way would bring about the end of the Postal Service. 

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., became angry with DeJoy when discussing his plan to slow down delivery for some mail, which is expected to disproportionately impact rural areas.

“I hate this plan and I’m going to do everything I can to kill it,” Hawley said.

He pledged to “go to the mat” on the issue and work with everyone on the committee to sink DeJoy’s plan, vowing to “go down with the ship” if necessary. The senator raised his voice and said he was no longer interested in being nice to DeJoy, was growing tired of his initiatives and had “waited and waited and waited” for improved performance. 

“You won’t go down with the ship,” DeJoy responded. “If you’re successful, the Postal Service will go down.” 

After the hearing, Hawley did not lay out any specific plans for defeating DeJoy’s reforms, saying he hopes he can build pressure so the postmaster general  “changes his mind.” 

“It seems like there's bipartisan opposition to the plan,” Hawley said. “I've hardly heard anybody who supports it.”

Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., who chairs the committee, said he will follow up with the Postal Regulatory Commission on its review of DeJoy’s changes, which is due out in January. Its findings are non-binding, and Peters said he will demand answers if postal management ignores the commission’s recommendations. 

DeJoy said during the hearing he would carefully review PRC’s assessment and update his plans accordingly, though he suggested there was “an overwhelming propensity to move forward” and he expects to do so. The postmaster general has frequently clashed with his regulators and accused them of standing in the way of the changes necessary to keep the Postal Service afloat. 

Peters made clear during and after the hearing that he, too, is not pleased with DeJoy’s current track.  

“This is a process that we're going through, but we'll see how it unfolds,” Peters said. “But there's no question there are serious concerns. The way it's been implemented so far in different places has often led to declines in service, while also increasing cost, which is clearly not what we want to see.” 

Several other lawmakers, including Sens. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., and Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., voiced their dissatisfaction with DeJoy’s plans, focusing on processing plant consolidation and the “Regional Transportation Optimization” plan that will require mail to sit overnight at post offices instead of being collected each evening for transportation to a processing center. USPS paused those efforts in the run up to the election and its annual holiday busy season, but has vowed to resume them early next year. 

Lawmakers also noted that postal management recently announced lower targets for 2025, with USPS now saying, for example, it expects to deliver regular cards and letters slated for two-day delivery on time just 87% of the time in fiscal 2025 compared to its goal of 93% in fiscal 2024. For mail scheduled to be delivered in three-to-five days, USPS now hopes to deliver 80% on time compared to 90% in fiscal 2024. The Postal Service also recently announced its intention to deliver some mail more slowly.  

“You lowered your targets for next year so you could meet your targets,” Ossoff said. 

DeJoy countered that he was simply seeking to put forward goals and standards that are realistic. When pushed by Ossoff as to why Georgia is currently only seeing 75% of mail delivered on time, despite a promise this spring that USPS would be “where we need to be” within 60 days, DeJoy said the current performance level would remain as is for the foreseeable future. 

The postmaster general sought to reassure senators that he and his staff were prepared to make adjustments to ensure performance improvements. After the Atlanta region piloted DeJoy’s plan to consolidate processing into larger, regional centers, on-time performance dropped to just 36%. That led to his 60-day improvement promise in April, which Ossoff said he has failed to meet after eight months. 

“We have people looking at every bit of performance on all of these moves and we have response teams ready to jump in and make the necessary corrections,” DeJoy said. 

Ossoff made clear he did not think DeJoy was doing enough and when the postmaster general said his attacks were becoming personal, the senator countered that he was reflecting the concerns of his constituents. 

“You're not meeting your financial targets,” Ossoff said. “You're hemorrhaging cash when you said you'd be making money. Delivery in Georgia has been abysmal this year. You have not recovered as you said you would. You need to do better for my constituents in Georgia.” 

When answering concerns raised by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., the committee’s top Republican, over the Postal Service’s hiring of new employees despite ongoing financial losses, DeJoy said lawmakers should trust him to stay the course. 

“Right now I know what I'm doing with regard to transit, consolidating the organization, trying to move the organization forward to get work hours out, which we have, get transportation costs out which we have, and to grow the business, which we have,” DeJoy said, “and we will continue down that path until somebody hauls me out of here.”