Trump backs idea to make the Postal Service — which is included in the Constitution — private

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Get our free Inside Washington email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Privatization also would lead to price-gouging by private companies.” open image in gallery Cuts to the nation’s postal system would upend service to rural Americans who rely on the US Postal Service for its mandated obligation to mail anywhere in the country The nation’s postal service was founded in 1775 with Benjamin Franklin as its chief, and later written into the Constitution to grant Congress authority to “establish Post Offices and post Roads,” empowering the agency’s authority to carry, deliver and regulate the mail. Broader cuts to the USPS would upend the e-commerce industry as well as the delivery of medications and other critical mail for rural Americans who rely on the agency’s “universal service obligation,” which mandates USPS to deliver mail regardless of how far it needs to go or how much it costs to do so — meaning that the agency is often the only carrier that can deliver to hard-to-reach Americans across the country. open image in gallery Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, whose term in office was supported by Trump, has proposed a 10-year plan with rate hikes and other changes to the USPS DeJoy implemented significant cuts and service changes to the agency during the COVID-19 pandemic, despite a surge in demand for the mail’s critical lifeline during the public health crisis, and as 2020 elections saw a massive increase in vote-by-mail options that critics have argued were undermined by DeJoy’s plans. Cut the Pentagon’s bloat if you want to save money.” While Trump mocked the agency as a “joke” and Amazon’s “delivery boy,” his White House budget office wrote in 2018 that the USPS is “caught between a mandate to operate like a business, but with the expenses and political oversight of a public agency.” A 2018 report from the Office of Management and Budget argued that a privately-run USPS would have more flexibility to raise prices, but it would still face oversight from Congress and other agencies.