House Passes $25 Billion Funding For Postal Service

The House of Representatives voted 257-150 in favor of providing the Postal Service with a $25 billion influx of funding and to prohibit any cost-saving operational changes that would delay mail delivery until next year or after the public health emergency is declared over.

Members of Congress were called back into session earlier this month to vote on the legislation, which was ultimately supported by 26 Republicans, amidst accusations that President Donald Trump was sabotaging mail delivery ahead of the general election.

“Alarmingly, across the nation, we see the devastating effects of the President’s campaign to sabotage the election by manipulating the Postal Service to disenfranchise voters,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told congressional Democrats last week.

“Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, one of the top Trump mega-donors, has proven a complicit crony as he continued to push forward sweeping new operational changes that degrade postal service, delay the mail, and—according to the Postal Service itself—threaten to deny the ability of eligible Americans to cast their votes through the mail in the upcoming elections in a timely fashion,” said the speaker.

DeJoy recently committed to pausing the cost-saving changes he implemented this Summer in order to place the Postal Service on firm financial standing, and told lawmakers Friday that he was committed to delivering election mail on-time, referring to the job of doing so as a “sacred duty,” according to The Washington Post.

However, DeJoy’s decision to halt operational changes until after the general election doesn’t affect the warnings some states have been given concerning the incompatibility between their election laws and the Postal Service’s delivery guidelines—warnings reportedly planned before DeJoy even assumed his position at USPS, reports the Post.

For example, Michigan allows residents to request absentee ballots as late as the Friday before an election, which would leave only four days for it to be mailed back to the voter and received in time to be counted. That said, the ballot could still be dropped off at the clerk’s office by the deadline instead of mailed back, according to the secretary of state.

In a statement released after the House passed the Postal Service legislation, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) blasted congressional Democrats for failing negotiate a coronavirus legislative package, and then leaving town only to rush back over “overblown conspiracy theories about the United States Postal Service…”

“Speaker Pelosi is blocking billions in relief for American families and laid-off workers because anything short of her entire wishlist was ‘piecemeal,’” said McConnell, referring to the House-passed $3.4 trillion coronavirus package. “But as soon as House Democrats convinced themselves their own jobs might be in jeopardy, they came sprinting back to Washington to pass a totally piecemeal postal bill without a dime to help struggling families.”

The majority leader also noted that Trump has vowed to not sign the House-passed Postal Service legislation into law.