The Daily Beast Podcast - Aug. 16 Member Bonus: What the Fuck is Happening with the Mail?

Episode Date: October 15, 2020

This members-only episode was originally published on August 16, 2020 and moved to this feed for full member access. Delayed prescriptions, mailboxes being toted away, Americans dying and families wondering if they’ll get evicted. Seems like a great time for the Senate to go on vacation, at least in Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s eyes. In this members-only episode of The New Abnormal, Sen. Gary Peters, Sr. (D-MI,) who is leading the investigation into the United States Postal Service backlog, explains this postal shitshow to co-host Molly Jong-Fast and producer Jesse Cannon—and how Mitch McConnell is screwing over the American people from a comprehensive COVID relief package. “So the negotiations started finally,” says Peters, “but not in the room was Mitch McConnell.” And neither was another Very Important Person: “President Trump was on the golf course,” says Peters. Then, there is the postal service situation. “There was a major spike in comments coming in” about post office delays, he explained. That’s when he kicked off his inquiry, which hasn’t been easy with a Postmaster General who is “not very forthcoming.” But he does have some ideas on what’s happening (hint: it’s pretty messed up.) Plus! The group touches on where polling is for Joe Biden in Michigan (which makes Molly’s heart race) and what those who are furious about what is going on with the post office can do. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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of the time per Hello al-Mesh in shopify.s.combeckr records. Hi, and welcome to the new Abnormals' member-exclusive episode, and we thank you so much for being here. Gary Peters Sr. is a junior senator from Michigan. He's going to talk to us about the fuckery with the postal service, as well as why Mitch McConnell is screwing you over and holding up COVID-Aid.

And the other voice you will be hearing in this interview is our producer, Jesse Kahn. The Senate is on break now, right? It is. Can you explain to me what's going on? Well, we shouldn't be on break at all. We need to do an additional COVID package. We need to provide help for folks who need to continue to put food on the table, roof over their head.

We need to make sure our small businesses survive this crisis so that we can get the economy going strongly. And that doesn't happen without small businesses surviving. We need to deal with the health aspects of it. Testing is still too slow. We've got to put additional resources into the capacity need to turn those around a lot quicker. And yet, Mitch McConnell has us in recess, which makes no sense whatsoever. You know, the House passed a very comprehensive package three months ago. And yet, Mitch

McConnell did not bring it forward for a discussion in the Senate. And here we are. And now we're in a really difficult situation where you're going to see the economy continue to weaken, according to many economists. And when you start digging a hole, it's a whole lot more difficult to dig back out of that hole. So it's really unfortunate that we're not seeing leadership from Mitch McConnell. And quite frankly, we haven't seen that from the Trump administration as well. In fact, even during some of our preliminary discussions, Mr. President Trump was on the golf course, not being hands on on a major crisis facing our country. So when Mitch says we're doing recess, that's it, right? There's no way to push back against that. They have the majority. They can move to adjourn.

And then that's just what they did. And there are no Republicans who are like, wait a second, people are going to lose their homes? It's what's frustrating is that we have a lot. large block of Republicans who believe, and this is part of what Mitch McConnell, he put forward his proposal, which was inadequate in so many ways. And yet he didn't even have support of his own caucus, because my understanding is there are roughly 20, we think probably more than 20 members of the Senate Republican caucus who believe there should be zero aid for the country. They don't want to appropriate one additional dollar, which makes no sense and clearly is tone death to the struggles that everyday folks are facing. So explain this to me. This is what I thought was happening.

So Republicans weren't able to make a deal with themselves. So they decided to go on vacation. The negotiations, we wanted to have negotiations to come together with another package or the house, as I mentioned, you know, already passed a very comprehensive package. So the idea was to come together, bring everybody to the table. Let's figure out where we can find some middle ground to get the aid, particularly when folks who are unemployment, for example, we're facing a financial cliff with the with the premium payments going away, the $600 a week disappearing at the end of July, and that was going to put many, many families in a severe financial situation. So the negotiations started finally, but right at the cliff date, basically.

And in those negotiations were Speaker Pelosi, leader Schumer. You had Secretary Manuchin from the White House, but not in the room was Mitch McConnell. He wasn't even in the room because his caucus was not united. You know, over 20 people didn't want to do anything. and President Trump was not actively involved at all. He was on his golf course. This just makes me apoplectic, but not as apoplectic as the situation with the post office. Let's talk about the post office. Absolutely.

So four days ago, you opened an investigation into the post office. What were the first signs you saw that something was going wrong, horribly wrong with the post office? Well, I began to hear from constituents that were calling the office, contacting the office, complaining about mail taking a lot longer than they had ever experienced. I'm ranking member on Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs, a part of that our committee's responsibilities oversight of the U.S. Postal Service. So I'm actively engaged in postal issues regularly. So I follow what people in Michigan are saying about the Postal Service. And it's certainly not unusual to have folks have critiques of the Postal Service. We get that on a record. But there was a spike.

A major spike in comments coming in. When I monitor what constituent are saying when they contacted my office and to see the spike, I'm like, whoa, what's going on here? We need to look into it. And the more we looked into it, the more we realized how widespread it was. And then we started talking to folks who are actually in the post offices, our postal workers, our letter carriers, mail handlers. And let me just say at the outset, these are incredibly professional people. They believe in the mission. They work hard. They do whatever they can to get the mail out as quickly as possible. It's something that's just part of who they are. And they started complaining saying, we're now in policies that we've never seen before, and it's having the impact of slowing down the mail.

At a time we're in a pandemic and people are relying on mail more than ever for things like critical medicines. When our small businesses are relying on mail to do their online business and send packages out to their customers, this is not the time to see a decrease in service. And people are certainly very concerned. And that's when I said, okay, we've got to really do a formalized investigation. I have my committee staff now working on that investigation to get the facts. And quite frankly, it's really hard to get facts from this postal service and this new postmaster general.

Can you explain what you think is going on, what you suspect? Yeah, and this is what we've been hearing. And we're certainly getting an awful lot of evidence. And if you look at some of these policies in place, which is to make overtime, extremely difficult, if not just outright, not allowed to have folks on overtime, not to send out also when you're looking at a surge of mail, there are trucks that go out that then deliver to other distribution sites. And normally, my understanding, is that if there's additional surge of mail, they would hold up a truck to make sure the truck was full and that mail was then moved on. But now

those trucks just keep moving. And if mail is left on the loading dock, so be it. The truck is moving away from that and going out. Also, the sorters, the processors, these machines that do all the sorting, which are amazing machines, but their hours have been cut down so they're not sorting as much mail. Then the thing that's probably most disturbing when you hear and you talk to folks who are working in the post offices are, you know, leticaries and workers is that they said, you know, throughout their career, it's always been a kind of part of their ethos. If there's a mail on the floor, you do everything you can to get that mail out that day. Get it out because timely delivery is the heart and soul of the postal service. And yet now if there's mail on the floor, the supervisors and managers will say, well, you know, go home, just leave it there. You can work on it tomorrow.

And then when they get there tomorrow, they got a pile of mail. And then, as you know, that just starts to accumulate. And if you think of any business in America, if all of a sudden you have a surge of mail or if another business, a surge of customers for your service, you put people on overtime because you want to keep your customers happy. And you're really happy to be able to do that because you know more revenues coming into your business. This is a time where the Postal Service should be delivering things as quickly and as efficiently as possible. And yet management seems to be getting in the way consistently. So a lot of people's concern is you opening an inquiry into this is going to take so long as the bureaucracy. How fast do you see there being able to be action taken on this since we have this election where we can hopefully vote? Do you see this being a way that we're possibly able to get some change before the election by doing this investigation? We have to do it quickly. And certainly this investigation is not a delaying tactic in any way.

It's an attempt to get answers from a postmaster general who's not very, very forthcoming. And we're seeing inconsistent answers too. inquiry that we had was, you know, tell us more about these policies that are, that we are hearing, that are being put in place. His initial response back to our inquiries through his staff was it, well, these are local policies. This is not national. We were hearing things that were not that case. It was too uniform. We pressed it again. And he came back and said, oh, well, no, these are national policies. Complete turnaround from that. And now we're pushing for answers as to, well, if you have these national policies, what informed these decisions? What sort of data were you

looking at. What were you attempting to accomplish and what was it based on? We're not hearing any answers to that. And then the next question is, well, if these policies are clearly not working to make mail delivery more efficient and timely, are you prepared then to go back to the old standards as quickly as possible? Because clearly, this is a big issue, as you mentioned, for the election, that we have to make sure people have the ability to have their voice heard and do it in a safe, secure way of through vote by mail. But it is broader. I mean, right now, we're at a critical stand today with folks who count on medicines to be delivered to them. The VA, for example, I've talked to a number of folks, but Michelle Brown is someone who we had a discussion with. She orders her drugs for

her husband. Usually it takes three days for them to get the drugs once they put the order that comes through the Postal Service. The last order took 13 days before it got to them, and he missed doses because of that. This is of immediate concern. I'm certainly focused on the election. There's no question I'm really concerned about it. But let's also understand this affects everyday live for people today, whether it's medicine or paychecks or their ability to get bills so they pay them on time so they don't have late fees. The Postal Service touches so many aspects of our life and it's doing it today, which means we have to fix this as soon as possible. So what can you do quickly to take this situation back? Well, certainly right now it's about

highlighting it, getting the American people to demand answers, which I know the Trump administration is not very forthcoming when it comes to any kind of transparency of their but it's important for us to demand answers and to demand changes. And it's pretty straightforward. Just go back to the way you were doing it before as opposed to these changes. We can certainly act legislatively, but we need to be in session. Back to how we started the interview here, we've got to be in session. And we would hope that in a COVID package, which we need to do. We need to provide additional assistance for families and small businesses and make sure we're dealing with the health crisis. We would insert this language in that legislation to be able to deal with it in the legislation. So that would be a quicker action, but we have to be in session. I would hope. that the administration would respond to this because to me it's looking very clear. And you've even heard that directly from President Trump that talked about this. He ties it directly to the election and his desire to basically make it more difficult to vote. And the hypocrisy is amazing because he has just applied for an absentee ballot. So he will be voting by mail.

And yet he's making very clear that his intent is to try to make it more difficult for Americans to do the very same thing. So former Obama advisor, David Ploff, sent a very popular tweet yesterday that said primetime hearings now, subpoenas to Trump White House and camp officials. This is a RICO case. Do you have any feelings on it if you see this as a RICO case? Well, certainly we need to continue to investigate this. And I'm trying to get a hearing within our committee. I've talked to the chair of the committee. And he has been open to having a hearing that we can have put before the American people through our online security and government affairs committee. but we're not in Washington now. I'm prepared to get on a plane now to get back there in order to do it. And I would hope my fellow committee members would do the same because I'm sure they're hearing the same thing from their constituents. And we need to lean into this in a very comprehensive way.

So if the American people want to make sure they can vote by mail, what should they be doing? Well, certainly they need to apply right away so that the ballots can get to them as quickly as possible. The outgoing ballots will go by mail. As soon as the window opens, for you to request a ballot. Folks should do that. Once they get the ballot, they should allow plenty of time to mail it back. And if they're within a window of a couple weeks, drop it off. You can drop ballots off directly at your clerk's office. Every state is different, but in Michigan, there's a concerted effort that we're working very hard to make sure that there are just drop boxes, that people can drive back and put it in the drop box for the clerk. And when you think about it,

you would be driving to a poll anyways, just drive to the clerk. And it's going to be really quick and simple. Just put it in the drop box and you know it's going to be a hurt. So Michigan, which is a swing state, is going to have drop boxes. We are, yes. We're trying to get as many of those drop boxes as possible because, as you know, Michigan is a key background state. Oh, I'm aware. It's impossible to be the president of the United States if you don't win Michigan. And clearly, I'm in a very high profile race. I'm one of two Democrats in a state that Donald Trump won. And my race is critical for a majority in the Senate. So you're running for your This is your second term.

Correct. I'm in my first term now. Your polling has been good, but tell me about what's happening. Well, Michigan, because of the fact that we are such a battle of ground stay for the presidency, that makes my Senate race won as well. The Republicans are focusing on this race. In fact, I have outside groups that are pouring money in against me. In fact, Betsy DeVos's family, the DeVos family, has started a super PAC just focused on my election.

So they're putting in resources for that that tells you how important it is. And even though polling in Michigan has been reasonably good for both me and for Joe Biden, I think it's important for folks to realize in a recent story that was in 538, for example, that showed that although polling is good for Joe Biden generally in Michigan, it is still below where Hillary Clinton was at this time in 2016. Oh, nightmare fuel! Sorry, go on. Continue.

We know how that story ended, which means we have to be focused. And we really need to be focused to make sure everybody's vote actually. actually gets counted. So this is a critical issue for us and for the country that people vote. We turn out Democrats and that their vote actually gets counted. So if the American people are furious, what should they be doing to sort of change the calculus here? Should they protest? Should they demand that Mitch comes back into, because Mitch can call the Senate back in session, right? Absolutely. We're all ready to go. You'd ask any Democratic Senator or any of my colleagues, we're ready to go. We want to deal on a comprehensive COVID package and we want to

to deal on this. We want to work on this mail issue. The postal service is critical. So if people made a big enough stink, Mitch might bring the Senate back. Certainly. I think it's really important for folks, particularly if they have a member, a Republican member of Congress that represents them. If they have a Republican senator that represents their state, they need to make sure that they're reaching out to them and demanding action. Because a third of all Americans may lose their homes. And Mitch McConnell has sent everyone on vacation for the month of August. Yeah, Mitch McConnell has not treated this with the seriousness that it deserves, which was clear after the House passed their package three months ago,

that he did nothing. And instead, we were taking judges and approving judges that are very far right wing and many of them simply not qualified. And that's where Mitch McConnell's focus was, not with helping American people. So if the American people, if you're a listener of this podcast right now, and we have a bunch, we're very lucky, tell me what they should be doing. They should be telling Mitch to bring the Senate back. What else? Well, and I think they need to focus, too, on postal service. This is simply unaccept. There's also a postal board of governors, reach out to the board of governors that has oversight over the postmaster general and let them know that these delays that they're saying are unacceptable. I think it's important for the board of governors to hear

directly. Can they fire the postmaster general? Yes, they would have that ability. If they did fire the postmaster general, though, is there any chance of a better one being appointed or is it just going to be another Trump blackie? Yeah, I think you would see Donald Trump would put forward someone else. Ultimately, this is not a fix quick enough for any of us, but ultimately we've got to make sure we change things on Election Day. There's no question about this. This is just another reason.

But in the meantime, we need to continue to raise this issue and make noise about it. And I think if part of it too is just to make sure folks who are going to be voting by mail understand that once they get that ballot, they need to turn it around as quickly as possible, or put it in drop boxes or drop it off at their local clerk as well. Just always err on the side of caution, make sure you're dropping that ballot off, and apply early. Apply immediately as soon as you're allowed to. In Michigan, folks can could apply. When they applied for the August primary, they were able to ask to also be put on the list for the general election.

A lot of folks did that, which is great. But we still know there are a lot of people that want to vote in November, and they should put in their applications now. They can do that now. It should continue to do that. It would, depending on the state you're in, apply as early as you can. On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new abnormal from the Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science who will help us understand what's happened to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media.

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