Pascrell Blasts Latest Trump USPS Sabotage

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-09) today reacted to a report in the Washington Post confirming allegations that the new political leadership of the United States Postal Service (USPS) is forcing its employees to deliberately delay mail deliveries to Americans.

“The deliberate delaying of Americans’ mail delivery would be a stunning act of sabotage against our postal service,” said Rep. Pascrell, of the USPS’s biggest champions in Congress. “If these reports are accurate, Trump and his cronies are openly seeking to destroy the post office during the worst public health crisis in a century. Attacks on USPS not only threaten our economy and the jobs of 600,000 workers. With states now reliant on voting by mail to continue elections during the pandemic, the destabilizing of the post office is a direct attack on American democracy itself. It has been 58 days since the House passed $25 billion to help keep USPS alive. The Senate must pass the HEORES Act now. Democracy hangs in the balance.”

Rep. Pascrell has been a leader in Congress demanding reform to return the USPS to its former glory and strengthen it so it remains an integral part of American life, goals he outlined in a well-received April 2019 essay in Washington Monthly. Pascrell is a cosponsor of H.R. 2382, the USPS Fairness Act that would finally remove the health care prefunding anchor that has been strangling USPS since 2007. Pascrell is also a strong supporter of widespread postal banking, and in June 2019 his bipartisan amendment allocating $1 million to begin funding a postal banking system was passed by the House of Representatives.

On May 21, Pascrell wrote to USPS Inspector General Tammy Whitcomb demanding an investigation of turmoil at the USPS, purportedly stemming from a pattern of interference engineered by the Trump administration in its efforts to destabilize the post office.

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