Louis DeJoy is no longer postmaster general, but his five years at the head of the U.S. Postal Service wreaked havoc on its essential mission. One of the few things that Democrats and Republicans in Congress seem to agree on is that DeJoy’s tenure was a disaster.
His plan for the Postal Service was called “Delivering for America.” It was supposed to make the operation profitable by raising postal rates twice a year and prioritizing package delivery. But the USPS continues to lose business amid a chorus of complaints about declining service.
The fundamental fallacy shared by DeJoy and many of his critics is that the Post Office should be run like a business, as a profit center. No one expects other governmental agencies that provide critically important services — the Centers for Disease Control or the Social Security Administration, for example — to be profitable. Guaranteeing an essential service like mail delivery to everyone, as the Post Office was created by Congress to do, costs money — as it should.
Part of that mission, established more than 200 years ago, was to encourage the publishing of local newspapers by making postage rates for them extremely low. It was clear to the founders of this nation that a vigorous and independent press was necessary in a democracy.
Postage rates are going up again on July 13, as DeJoy planned, with the price of a first-class stamp increasing from 73 to 78 cents. Newspapers will take another hit, with postage rates for periodicals going up by an average of 9.3 percent. Periodical postage rates have already increased by more than 40 percent since 2021.
Politicians of all stripes must be hearing complaints from their constituents. The July postage increase is “another gut punch to the service and Americans who depend on it,” wrote Kevin Yoder, a former Republican congressman from Kansas, in the Washington Post. “There’s no doubt that DeJoy and his plan have been a total failure.”
There is actually a rare bipartisan bill in Congress that addresses some of the Postal Service’s systemic problems, with particular attention to the importance of low postal rates and reliable service for local newspapers. The co-sponsors of the bill in the Senate are Peter Welch, Democrat of Vermont, and Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota — who rarely agree on anything.
“A vibrant and healthy local press has always been a defining feature of American democracy,” said Sen. Welch. “Today, local news offers a crucial alternative to online information ecosystems, which are too often distorted by disinformation.”
The legislation was introduced in the U.S. House by Rep. Robert Aderholt, Republican of Alabama. “Papers are being squeezed out,” he said, “not by a lack of readers, but by an inefficient Postal Service that delays deliveries and threatens their survival.”
Aderholt is a right-wing climate-change denier, defender of big oil and guns, and opponent of gay rights, immigrants’ rights, and abortion. He’s not someone I would have expected to find common ground with — but as Smith College Professor Crystal Fleming said at Provincetown’s Juneteenth celebration last week, “We are living in challenging times.”
