A top Democrat in the House expressed outrage after the United States Postal Service (USPS) agreed to cut 10,000 jobs under pressure from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
In a scathing statement, Democratic Rep. Gerald Connolly of Virginia slammed USPS’s decision to bend to DOGE’s pressure. He expressed his worry that Musk and DOGE would use their influence at the USPS, which has a workforce of 635,000, to “undermine it, privatize it, and then profit off Americans’ loss.”
“This capitulation will have catastrophic consequences for all Americans – especially those in rural and hard to reach areas – who rely on the Postal Service every day to deliver mail, medications, ballots, and more," wrote the Virginian, who is the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. “Reliable mail delivery can’t just be reserved for MAGA supporters and Tesla owners.”
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Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said in a letter to Congress on Thursday that he had “signed an agreement” with DOGE to make the job cuts and shave billions off the organization’s budget.
DeJoy, a Republican megadonor, assumed the position in 2020 during President Donald Trump‘s first term.
“Fixing a broken organization that had experienced close to $100 billion in losses and was projected to lose another $200 billion, without a bankruptcy proceeding, is a daunting task,” DeJoy wrote. “Fixing a heavily legislated and overly regulated organization as massive, important, cherished, misunderstood and debated as the United States Postal Service, with such a broken business model, is even more difficult.”
DeJoy said that the agency’s workforce had reduced by 30,000 since 2021 and that there would be a “further reduction of another 10,000 people in the next 30 days” through a voluntary retirement program.
DeJoy’s letter praised DOGE, which has sought to take a chainsaw to federal spending, for offering to help the USPS with “identifying and achieving further efficiencies.”
The USPS has always operated at a loss, but its financial difficulties have mounted in recent years. It now loses billions of dollars a year. Both Musk and Trump have suggested it should be privatized.
After floating the privatization of USPS at a tech conference last week, Musk, the multibillionaire owner of Tesla and X, added, “We should privatize anything that can reasonably be privatized.”
Critics of the idea say it would have a negative impact on rural communities and small businesses. Unlike private shippers, the agency’s “universal service obligation” means it has to make distant deliveries even when doing so would not be profitable.
The president of the National Association of Letter Carriers said in a statement that the union was “closely monitoring” DOGE’s actions at the USPS.
We “will fight like hell against any attack on the rights and privacy of NALC members,” Brian Renfroe wrote.
