What the hell is going on with the USPS? With the barrage of bullshit going on from the Trump Administration it is hard to stay focused on any one topic for too long. But there is a crisis happening with the USPS, they are $160 billion dollars in debt and you deserve to know what’s going on.

The modern postal service as we know it has a long and rich history. The Post Office was one of the few federal agencies established in the constitution. Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution, known as the Postal Clause or the Postal Power, empowers Congress “To establish Post Offices and Post Roads.” The Post Office has the constitutional authority to designate mail routes. The Post Office is also empowered to construct or designate post offices with the implied authority to carry, deliver, and regulate the mail of the United States as a whole.” The first United States Post Office department was created through the Postal Service Act which was singed into law by President George Washington Feb 20, 1792.

While debating the original Post Office Act, a group including Alexander Hamilton argued that the post office should not be funded by the government, that they should make a profit that the government can use. Others, including George Washington and James Madison, didn’t seem to care whether it turned a profit. Speaker of the House Jonathan Trumbull fought for the post office to be supported by the federal government because he believed that educating citizens of a newly formed America would “prevent the degeneracy of a free government”. Trumbull was right, the creation of the Post Office exploded literacy in America and allowed people from all over the country to be connected like never before. Since the creation of the Post Office the government has always set the rates of postage fees, when this bill was first passed the government allowed printers to ship their newspapers and magazines at an affordable rate, one cent to destinations within 100 miles, and one and a half cents to destinations more than 100 miles away.

The Post office worked efficiently and continued to expand all across the country as America’s population grew. The Post Office was one of the major federal agencies employing people in economic recessions, during the great Depression Roosevelt Theordore Roosevelt built around 1300 new post offices as part of a jobs program.

The Post Office was a huge catalyst for the growth of the Black middle class. Bill Pascrell Jr, of the Washington Monthly writes, “For generations, African Americans were locked out of good government jobs. But as the federal bureaucracy began to desegregate, black workers joined the USPS en masse. Under the Harding and Coolidge administrations, black people made up between 15 and 30 percent of postal employees, making the agency one of America’s foremost incubators of the black middle class.”

After a large postal worker strike in Chicago, the structure of the Post Office changed dramatically. Congress passed the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, which exiled the postmaster general from the president’s cabinet and downgraded the post office from a federal department to an independent federal agency. This bill also added a board of governers, mostly businessmen and oligarchs to oversee the Post Office along with the Postmaster.

This bill was the beginning of strong forces that have been attempting to privatize the Post Office by making the agency ineffective and perpetually in debt. After the passage of this bill the post office was in a very strange situation. The board of governors desperately wanted to turn the Post Office into a money making scheme, but the only way a business can make money is to set prices and rates at a competitive rate which was not possible because all post office rate increases require congressional approval. The passage of this bill made USPS subject to strict congressional oversight and regulation and also not able to compete in the free market. This bill metaphorically shot the post office in the foot.

A second huge detriment to the success of the Post Office was the unopposed Passing of Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006. This bill, “further narrowed the post’s charter and prohibited the Postal Service from engaging in new activities outside of mail delivery. The law’s most destructive section spearheaded by President George W. Bush, innocuously labeled “Postal Service Retirement and Health Benefits Funding,” imposed an unusual requirement on how the post covers its employee health pensions.

Prior to 2006, the post funded its pensions like all agencies: pay as you go. Now, however, the agency had to pre-fund the health care benefits of employees at least fifty years in advance. To meet this requirement, the post was obligated to place approximately $5.5 billion into a pension fund each year.” To this date USPS is the ONLY independent agency that has to deal with these extraordinary regulations put on their pension program.

The current American president sees this crisis as an opportunity to do what Republicans have wanted to do for decades, privatize the post office and also make sure black people suffer just a bit more in life. In May 2020 Louis DeJoy was appointed as PostMaster General. He is the first postmaster general in two decades with no experience working in the post office. DeJoy, a vocal Republican and big fan of Trump has been working with the president to completely undermine the legitimacy of USPS in an effort to rig the election for Trump. Over the last few weeks he has been banning overtime among USPS employees, dismantling high speed mail sorting machines, and removing mail collection boxes all over the country.

Why would he be doing this? It’s simple. Trump thinks he’s going to lose, the media and the polls say he’s going to lose. Therefore he is trying to cast doubt upon the entire legitimacy of American elections, this is nothing new, he did the same thing in 2016 when he was against Hilary Clinton. By claiming that there is rampant mail in voter fraud and working to make the USPS look incredibly inefficient he attempting to undermine the November election and steal another win. Then he can then convince the general public to get rid of the agency altogether, privatize it so he and the rest of the opportunistic vultures around him can make loads of money doing the exact same thing as the post office, but much worse and much less affordable to the American people.

Fortunately there was a bipartisan outcry and for now DeJoy has stated he would halt all the changes he is making…for now. There is a congressional hearing scheduled today where DeJoy will attempt to explain the choices he has been making. I would encourage you to tune in.