The Daily Signal - What’s Really Going on With the US Postal Service

Episode Date: August 20, 2020

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has called lawmakers back early to vote on legislation centered on the U.S. Postal Service. Pelosi and the Democrats asked Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and Postal Service Board of Governors Chairman Robert Duncan to come before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Aug. 24, fast-tracking a hearing originally set for mid-September. What is really going on with the Postal Service? Is it true that the Postal Service is removing sorting machines to sabotage mail delivery before the November election? David Ditch, a research associate in budget and transportation issues at The Heritage Foundation who focuses on federal spending and fiscal policy, joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss. We also cover these stories: A group of Democrat and Republican lawmakers asks House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to focus on issues faced by minorities and women during the coronavirus pandemic.  Texas Gov. Greg Abbott proposes legislation to prevent cities in the state from defunding their police departments.  Wildfires in California are forcing hundreds of residents to evacuate and Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, August 20th. I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Rachel Del Judas. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calling the House back early to vote on Postal Service legislation. David Ditch, a budget and transportation research associate at the Heritage Foundation, joins me on the Daily Signal podcast to discuss what's going on. Also, we invite you to take just five minutes to complete the Daily Signal podcast survey. We want to take your feedback. into consideration. So at the end of the show, head to dailysignal.com slash survey. Again, that's dailysignal.com slash survey to give us your input. And don't forget, if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe.

Now on to our top news. A group of Democrat and Republican lawmakers are asking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, to bring to the forefront issues faced by minorities and women during the coronavirus pandemic. 20 lawmakers wrote a letter to Pelosi and Schumer asking them to incorporate and refocus the Congressional Oversight Commission created through the coronavirus aid relief and economic security act via the Hill, saying, The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted women in racially diverse communities and asking Pelosi and McConnell to foster a greater focus on the disparate impacts of the novel coronavirus pandemic and diverse communities. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has proposed legislation to prevent Texas cities from defunding their police departments.

Speaking at a press conference Tuesday, Abbott, a Republican, announced plans to introduce a bill that will freeze a city's property tax at its current level if that city moves to defund its police department. Last week, the Austin City Council voted unanimously to defund its police department by $150 million, despite data showing that crime is rising in Austin. When crime is on the rise, the last thing we should do is defund law enforcement, and yet that is exactly what Austin did, Abbott said. The governor explained, per KXAN, that other Texas cities that follow Austin's example will be subject to a freeze on property taxes. Today we are announcing a legislative proposal

that will discourage defunding law enforcement agencies in Texas. The way this proposal works is this. Any city that defunds police departments will have its property tax revenue frozen at the current level. They will never be able to increase property, tax revenue again if they defund police. Cities that endanger residents by reducing law enforcement should not then be able to turn around and go back and get more property tax dollars from those

same residents whose lives the city just endangered. Wildfires in California are forcing hundreds of residents to evacuate and have made California governor Gavin Newsom declared the situation a state of emergency. CNBC reported Wednesday the residents of Northern California, including Napa and Sonoma counties, San Mateo, and Santa Cruz were under urgent evacuations. The LNU Lightning Complex Fire has burned 32,000 acres in Sonoma, Lake Napa, and Solano counties, and has destroyed some homes. Newsom, a Democrat, said Tuesday, via CNBC, California and and its federal and local partners are working in lockstep to meet the challenge and remain vigilant

in the face of continued dangerous weather conditions. The fall semester is looking very different than expected for many college students due to COVID-19. Several colleges began in-person classes only a week or two ago and have already moved to an online-only format. The University of Notre Dame announced Tuesday that it will stop in-person classes for at least two weeks due to a in COVID cases, which are suspected to be connected to off-campus student parties. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill also moved all classes online for the fall, only one week into the semester. And Michigan State University and Ithaca College announced Tuesday that they will hold their fall semester completely online, and students will not be permitted to live in the

dorms. In a letter to students, Ithaca College President Shirley Collado explained the decision to keep students at home for the fall, writing, it is easy to foresee the likelihood of a public health trajectory that would mandate the closure of the college due to circumstances beyond our control. Bringing students here only to send them back home would cause unnecessary disruption in the continuity of their academic experience. President Trump is asking his followers to boycott the company Goodyear. Goodyear reportedly told its employees that they can't wear hats or other attire that

says, make America great again or other political gear. On Wednesday, Trump tweeted, don't buy good year tires. They announced a ban on MAGA hats. Get better tires for far less. This is what the radical left Democrats do. Two can play at the same game and we have to start playing it now. It's a critical time in our nation's history. Now, more than ever, at the Daily Signal, we're committed to equipping you with the best information and insight, we possibly can. And to do that, we need your help. By sharing your thoughts and suggestions through our five-minute online survey, you can help the Daily Signal improve our reporting and reach more Americans with the message of freedom. Find the five-minute survey at

dailysignal.com slash survey. Again, that'sdailysignal.com slash survey. Now stay tuned for my conversation with the Heritage Foundation's David Ditch on what's really going on with United States Postal Service. I'm joined today on the Daily Signal podcast by David Ditch. He's a budget and transportation research associate at the Heritage Foundation who focuses on federal spending and fiscal policy. David, it's great to have you with us on the Daily Signal podcast. Great to be here.

Well, thank you so much for making time with us. So House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is calling the House back early to vote on Postal Service legislation. Can you tell us a little bit about what all is going on here? There has been a concerted effort going back to the spring, especially from House Democrats, to turn the Postal Service into a hot button issue related to COVID-19. In the spring, they were claiming that the Postal Service was facing imminent bankruptcy and that we needed to give, initially it was $25 billion and then $50 billion, and then it went all the way up to $75 billion. And then as it turned out, the Postal Service was not, in fact, facing imminent bankruptcy because while they have lower revenue from a reduction in mail demand, they've had a big surge in demand for package delivery. So their revenues are actually fairly stable this year. Despite that, there is still a big appetite to provide a massive taxpayer-funded bailout for the Postal Service.

And now the House Democrats are trying to link the issue to mail in ballots, and they are throwing an increasingly bizarre set of conspiracy theories out to try to make it seem as though the new postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, is destroying the postal service. That's just not the case. Well, on that note, David, Democrats have asked Lewis DeJoy, the Postmaster General and Postal Service Board of Governor's Chairman Robert Duncan to come before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on August 24th, which is fast-tracking a hearing that was originally set from in September, which DeJoy has been asked to attend. Why is all this being rushed, so kind of last minute? It's being rushed because the House majority seems to think that they have a political opportunity. For those of us who unfortunately spend hours per day on Twitter, there has been a torrent of interest in the Postal Service, and it is especially strong on the activist left. They believe that efforts by Postmaster General DeJoy to lower costs and reform the Postal Service somehow are tantamount to felony

election tampering and many things that are very commonplace in terms of things like moving mailboxes from high volume or from low volume locations to high volume locations or putting anti-theft devices

on mailboxes somehow these very standard actions that long predate the Trump administration are now being seen as a way to somehow prevent people from mailing in ballots. It really makes no sense whatsoever when you understand how the Postal Service works,

but because the House majority has been able to whip up such an emotional frenzy on this issue, they think they'll be able to essentially, to my mind, extort a bailout for the Postal Service, and ultimately the benefactors of a bailout would be the Postal Service Workers Union. Well, in a letter to Democrats, Pelosi said, speaking of Postmaster General Louis de Joy, that he is one of the Trump mega donors. He's proven a complicit crony as he continues to push forward sweeping new operational changes that degrade postal service, delay the mail, and according to the post office itself, she says, threatened to deny the ability of eligible Americans to cast

their votes through the mail and the upcoming elections in a timely fashion. David, is this a fair representation of what is happening? And if there's another side, what's the other side? It's absolutely unfair. So one of the big talking points discussed that the left is throwing out revolves around decommissioning and removing large, frankly, to a certain extent, out-of-date, mail-sorders. The practice of decommissioning these mail sorters goes back years. Again, far predates the Trump administration.

The reason why we are removing some of these mail sorters is because there's less mail. Mail volume peaked in America in 2001, and while we don't have the numbers for 2020, it frankly wouldn't surprise me if mail volume this year winds up being about half what it was back in 2001. If you have about half the mail, you need about half of the infrastructure involved in sorting the mail. And the fact that things like mail sorters are being turned off doesn't in and of itself mean that there is a conspiracy to sabotage the postal service unless we were talking about a massive reduction in the number of sorters, which there's no evidence of. Again, this is business as usual, predates DeJoy, predates Trump, but somehow because it's happening now, Pelosi and the rest of her crew are trying to paint this

as an attempt to sabotage the election. Well, David, you have a piece up at the Daily Signal headline fact check debunking 10 Postal Service myths. And the first myth that you tackle is that the Postal Service is, removing sorting machines to sabotage delivery. Why is this not the case? Removing the sorting machines has to do with taking the Postal Service infrastructure, which takes a lot of money to maintain, and right-sizing it to fit the actual demand of the general public.

Because of electronic communication, people are sending fewer first and second-class pieces of mail, and if there's fewer pieces of mail, and if there's fewer pieces of mail going around, you don't need all of the sorting machines to manage them. Well, another myth that you tackle is that the Postal Service plans the triple postage rates on mailed ballots. So what's the reality of the situation here? This one is especially pernicious, and it's been repeated by the likes of Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer. It's all over the media. The reality is that the Postal Service, and again, they were working on this guidance before Louis de Joy became Postmaster General.

They are trying to make sure that state and local governments are aware of what types of mail makes sense to send ballots in in different circumstances. Most people requesting mail-in ballots are requesting them weeks and months in advance. State and local governments can use second-class mail to send those ballots on top. and save money. But if people request ballots a week or even as little as four or five days before an election, it really is going to take a first-class stamp to make sure that the voter gets their ballot on time. The Postal Service is going out of their way to try to make sure that as many Americans as possible get their ballots. This, in fact, is the exact opposite of what

they would be doing if the postmaster general was trying to prevent people from getting their ballot. And through the magic of the game of telephone essentially, what was turned into practical advice on, hey, sometimes we need to send ballots by first class mail, somehow that has now been morphed into the post office demanding that all ballots, be sent by first-class mail, which is absolutely not the case. And I want to credit the Wall Street Journal, which did an excellent write-up on this on Monday. Well, another myth that you talk about is that the Postal Service needs more money to process mail ballots. Is this the case?

That is also not the case. This is something that I've seen from leaders in both parties, unfortunately. the reality is that the Postal Service processes billions of items every single week. The scale of the number of mail-in ballots that will be taking place over the course of the entire fall is in the tens of billions. So for any given week, the volume of mail-in ballots will be a couple percent at most. And keep in mind, the Postal Service has to manage the flow of mail and packages that specifically. spikes during the holiday season, and I guarantee the holiday season spike will be far in excess of anything we'll see related to mail and ballots.

The Postal Service has the resources it needs to maintain regular operations well into next year, and it has more than enough infrastructure to handle a small blip, a minor increase in mail volume that might take place. during the fall election season. Well, David, another myth you address in your piece is that the Postal Service only loses money due to unfair funding requirements. What's going on here with the situation? This debate is one where at times I can somewhat, I can, it's less of a myth than some of

the others, but it is still a myth. Postal service workers receive a very generous package of wages and benefits. And it's especially the benefits that have become really costly. So not only do they get a regular salary and retirement pension, they also have a generous retirement health care plan. And a 2006 law required the Postal Service to start paying into this retirement health care plan in a similar way that they pay into a pension benefit plan. And because of the incredible generosity of the retirement health plan, it's very expensive, and the postal service has been having to pay billions of dollars per year into the plan.

But it means that they are, to the extent they have paid into the plan, being responsible and making sure that there's money to provide for the benefits that the postal workers have earned. for whatever reason, the House majority is now of the mindset that it's wrong for the Postal Service to have to pay for these benefits. Frankly, I'm not sure what the alternative is. Is the alternative not paying for the benefits? That seems really irresponsible. It seems like that's going to put these postal workers on a little bit of a ledge. Because the benefits might not be there that they're counting on when they retire. I don't know whether the alternative is to take all these benefits and somehow socialize them

and put them all on the taxpayer dime. But unfortunately, if you were to take all of the unfunded pension benefits that the Postal Service owes its workers, you're talking right now about $120 billion. That's in the neighborhood of $1,000 for every household in the country. That's a big cost. And I wish the House majority was a little more honest about what they are looking for with this. So, David, to sum things up, in your opinion, how prepared is the Postal Service to take on the tasks that various states and many on the left are insisting that it performed for the election

in November. When it comes to handling mail-in ballots for even an expected increase in demand this year, I think the Postal Service can absolutely manage it. They don't need $25 billion to get the job done. They do, however, need serious reforms. And if people can check out my piece in daily signal, I point to some of those reforms along with some of the analysis that myself and my heritage colleagues have done. Well, David, thank you so much for joining us today on the Daily Signal Podcast and breaking down this issue. It's been great having you. Thanks, Rachel. And that will do it for today's episode.

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