‘No Joy In DeJoy-Ville’: Jeff Merkley Voices Concerns With Postmaster General Dejoy's New Policies

4 months ago

During a Senate Appropriations Committee markup on Thursday, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) raised concern about the post office’s processes.

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Transcript

00:00Senator Merkley. Let me just take a moment to note that in FSGG one of the

00:08issues that I'm very concerned about is that Postmaster General DeJoy has been

00:15downgrading the mail transfer centers and in my home state this means that in

00:21both Eugene and Medford, Central Oregon, that is the middle Willamette Valley and

00:25Southern Oregon, all the mail now has to go to Portland, Oregon to be

00:30redistributed. We are seeing significant delays in mail and I think this is in

00:35many states around the country so I know the Maine vice chair has seen this as

00:42well. This is really devastating, the idea that you send mail to somebody in your

00:48own town and it has to go 300 miles to the north to Portland and 300 miles back.

00:53DeJoy says this results in no delay. You cannot truck something 500 to 600 miles

00:58and not have a delay. This is following the downgrade in Bend in Central Oregon

01:03on the other side of the Cascade Mountains so that that has to go across

01:07the mountains and and go back. This plan delivering for America, it's really

01:15about delivering mail slowly for America and it means a continuous disincentive

01:22to use the mail service which degrades the source of revenues, further

01:28complicating the success of the department. I know folks in my state,

01:33DeJoy said nobody's complaining so I put out a question, how's it going? I

01:37received hundreds of letters saying it's going extremely poorly, people relating

01:41to their received medications, their ability to ship goods from small

01:45businesses, particularly in rural America. I am extremely disturbed about what's

01:51happening in the Postal Service. I suspect many members here are seeing

01:55similar things in the rural parts of their state and I hope we can find a way

02:00to create a lot more pressure to save the postal system from DeJoy. There is

02:05no joy in DeJoyville at this moment. Madam Chair. Vice Chair Collins. I just want to

02:17associate myself with the comments made by Senator Merkley. This is a terrible

02:24plan that the Postmaster General has come up with that would cause huge

02:30delays in the delivery of mail by consolidating the processing centers. In

02:38a state like mine, which is such a large rural state, it would result in mail

02:45having to go ten hours to be sorted and then go back to the community

02:53that's ten miles away and it is a huge problem. We've had a hearing on the

03:00proposal in Maine and one reason I hope that we do get to the FSGG bill is there

03:06is report language on this issue. In Maine, the Postmaster General has put a

03:13temporary pause on the consolidation plan but it simply makes no sense and

03:22ironically the result is going to be that the Postal Service will lose

03:27customers and that's the last thing that we want to see happen. I've also noted

03:36right in my own neighborhood, but I hear reports from across the state, that we're

03:41no longer receiving daily mail delivery and that is a real problem for seniors

03:47who receive medication via the mail and veterans as well. So I do hope that we

03:55can get to the FSGG bill because there is report language on this very

04:01important subject that so matters to our constituents. So thank you for bringing

04:06it up. Senator Sheehan. Madam Chair, if it's in order to continue to talk about

04:12this issue, I would like to add my support for the remarks of both Senators

04:17Merkley and Collins. We are extremely concerned in New Hampshire about what

04:23the Postal Service is doing. They intend to reduce mail processing locally in New

04:28Hampshire by cutting it out entirely from our state, sending it to Massachusetts

04:33and then back to New Hampshire. It's totally unacceptable and the Postmaster

04:39General informed Congress when there was a public outcry about this earlier, that

04:44he was going to suspend all of these changes until January 1st of 2025, but

04:51what we are hearing in New Hampshire from local stakeholders is that the

04:55Postal Service has gone ahead with these proposals. They're already moving

05:00equipment out of New Hampshire. I think this is totally unacceptable and I

05:04agree. We know there's report language in FSGG, but let me just raise my concern

05:11about CBO's analysis of report language because we put in language that would

05:21prevent the Postal Service from moving forward with those changes, just as the

05:27Postmaster said months ago, and the CBO has said that that scored as costing

05:33money even though it was report language. I don't understand how CBO figures that,

05:39but I think that they need to think carefully about how directing the Postal

05:46Service to comply with what it told Congress it was doing two months ago

05:50could actually cost money. So I don't know what this committee can do about it,

05:56but boy I think we ought to raise our concerns with not just the Postal

06:00Service but CBO about what's going on here.

‘No Joy In DeJoy-Ville’: Jeff Merkley Voices Concerns With Postmaster General Dejoy's New Policies

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