Postmaster general to reiterate Senate opening statement to House panel

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is expected to repeat the same opening statement to a House committee on Monday morning that he delivered a few days earlier before a Senate panel about changes to the U.S. Postal Service.

DeJoy will testify before the House Oversight and Reform Committee on Monday morning, where he is expected to face a far more fiery audience in House Democrats than he did when he testified before the GOP-led Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Friday.

House Democrats have clamored to hear from DeJoy in recent weeks, with some alleging that the Postmaster General — a GOP mega-donor — is instituting a series of changes, such as nixing overtime for mail carriers and removing some mail-sorting machines and ballot drop boxes, in order to help Trump in 2020 by deliberately slowing down the delivery of mail. 

The House Oversight panel is chaired by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), a Democrat who introduced a bill to prevent the Postal Service from making any changes to its operations or levels of service that it had in place at the start of 2020.

“It makes absolutely no sense to implement these dramatic changes in the middle of a pandemic, less than three months before the November elections,” Maloney said during a recent floor debate.

The bill, which would also provide $25 billion for Postal Service operations, passed largely along party lines on Saturday, after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) made the decision to have a rare weekend session that required members to return to the beltway during August recess.

The legislation, however, faces far more obstacles including opposition in the GOP-controlled Senate as well as threats from the White House that the bill will be vetoed. 

It also comes after the Postal Service recently warned election officials in 46 states and the District of Columbia that it could not guarantee that all mail-in ballots would arrive in time to be counted as it continues to grapple with financial troubles, delivery delays and an expected surge of mail related to the 2020 election.

House Republicans, meanwhile, are blasting Democrats’ push to include additional funding for the Postal Service, accusing them of pushing a “baseless conspiracy theory” that mail services are compromised because of cost-cutting measures.

“Like the Russia hoax and the impeachment sham, the Democrats have manufactured another scandal for political purposes,” said Rep. James Comer (Ky.), the top Republican on the House Oversight panel.

DeJoy told the Senate committee that the Postal Service is “fully capable and committed to delivering the nation’s election mail securely and on time.”