WASHINGTON — Mail delivery delays have continued through this year’s election season and beyond, leading a bipartisan group of senators to air their frustrations with U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy on Thursday.
Among them was Georgia’s Jon Ossoff, who said that on-time delivery rates for mail are still worse than before DeJoy opened a new regional processing center in Palmetto, despite his repeated promises to do better.
“Postmaster General, you’re not meeting your financial targets, you’re hemorrhaging cash when you said you’d be making money,” Ossoff, an Atlanta Democrat, said. “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.”
DeJoy said that first-class mail is delivered on time in metro Atlanta and North Georgia around 75% of the time. That is a marked improvement from the 36% rate this spring, but still lower than before DeJoy began implementing his “Delivering for America” plan in 2021.
In his opening remarks, DeJoy said “significant progress” had been made to rein in costs at the Postal Service while modernizing the agency and making it more efficient.
“When I agreed to take the role as postmaster general, the nation was at the beginning of a pandemic and the Postal Service was an organization in crisis, facing a diverse array of challenges that put the organization on a near-term trajectory to financial and service collapse,” he said.
DeJoy was, at times, defensive and combative during Thursday’s hearing, sparring with senators from both sides of the aisle. When Sen. Jacky Rosen, a Nevada Democrat, corrected his pronunciation of the state and chided him for refusing to adjust after previous reminders, DeJoy accused her of making fun of his manner of speech.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., grew impatient with the postmaster general’s response to questions about reducing delivery schedules in rural areas. When Hawley said he hated the plan and would try to kill it, noting the effects in his state, DeJoy responded: “If you’re successful, the Postal Service will go down.”
When Ossoff asked DeJoy to evaluate his own performance, DeJoy accused the senator of having it out for him.
“I know how you feel about me. You’ve been quite public, OK,” DeJoy said. “So, I’m not going to debate that you think I’m a failure.”
Ossoff said DeJoy was making concerns about postal delivery into a personal matter.
“It’s not about how I feel about you, postmaster general,” the senator said. “It’s about whether or not seniors in Georgia are receiving prescriptions. It’s the stacks of boxes of mail from courts that never arrived to their destination. It’s the small businesses who are not able to get products to market and it’s small businesses (that) can’t operate,” Ossoff said, speaking over DeJoy, who tried to interrupt.
“It’s death notices not delivered to family members, and you’re sitting here trying to explain that 75% on-time delivery is a success,” Ossoff said. “And it’s not.”
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