Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul wants USPS to cut jobs, make fewer deliveries to rural homes
Sen. Rand Paul made it clear Friday that he doesn’t think giving the United States Postal Service more money will solve any mail issues.
During a senate hearing, Paul told U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy that if the post office needs more money, it needs to cut employees.
“We started that a few years ago, but we’ve got to do more of it,” Paul said. “The mail keeps dropping, you’ve got to have less employees.”
Paul said the post office shouldn’t be allocated any additional money “unless it’s attached to reform.” He also said the post office should change its operations, and gave an example of reducing mail delivery down to twice a week for people who live “20 miles down a shell road.”
The American Postal Workers Union quickly took to Twitter to criticize Paul’s position on the issue.
“Rural Kentuckians will be angry to hear that,” the union said.
It’s not the first time Paul has been critical of giving more money to the post office in recent days. On Wednesday he said giving the money post office was like setting it on fire.
“You might as well put it into a big pile on your front lawn and burn it,” Paul said to Fox News’ Neal Cavuto. “There is 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.”
Paul told DeJoy that solving the post office’s financial issues is “almost an impossible problem.” DeJoy said he was “a little bit more optimistic” than Paul.
DeJoy was testifying in the virtual hearing to speak on current concerns that the USPS won’t be able to handle a substantial increase of mail-in ballots for the November election. Those concerns are partially due to President Donald Trump’s claim that he didn’t want the post office to get a proposed $25 billion in aid because without the money it’d be harder for people to vote by mail.
“They need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump said in an interview with Fox Business. “... If they don’t get those two items, that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting because they’re not equipped to have it.”
Trump has frequently condemned allowing Americans to vote by mail in large volumes for the presidential election this November, claiming it will lead to voter fraud.
During Friday’s hearing, DeJoy said the post office would be able to handle the election mail. He also said he plans to vote by mail himself this year. But he also said the ability for the USPS to deliver mail reliably is at “fundamental risk” due to financial issues. He said it was likely the post office will report a loss of over $9 billion this year.
“Without change, our losses will only increase in the years to come,” he said.
This story was originally published August 21, 2020 at 1:02 PM.