Transcripts For CSPAN3 U.S. 20240703

Willis testifies about changes to the u. S. Postal service and hes addressing the rise and assault postal workers. Oversight accountability subcommittee hearing is the first congressional appearance two years just over three hours. Good morning, the subcommittee on federal work will come to order and i would like to welcome everybody to this important meeting. May declare a recess at any time. We also have a number of members seeking to be weighed on todays hearing without objection, ms. Mays from South Carolina will committee on oversight accountability today. Also we have the gentleman from South Carolina and the Commerce Committee has asked to be part of this as well as the gentleman from california. The subcommittee of questioning todays hearing. Thank you. I recognize myself for making an Opening Statement let me welcome postmaster general, sometime last week we were preparing testimony and operational needs of the day and i found postmaster general im very thankful for the opportunity of the legislation passed last year on a bipartisan basis only signed by the president of United States. The plan that has goals and understanding and while there will be those who have issues and Ideas Service we believe the plan but hes responsible for will be held accountable to, not just by meeting for the subcommittee but also the full committee will. There will be people who provide them feedback but nonetheless may 2020, became our postmaster general and appreciate him for his service. His background running large operations because his ability to effectively grab this issue, it is important. He inherited a Postal Service that was 60 days from running out of cash in organization and desperate need of modernization. Since his arrival, hes taken that issue on. Obviously when youre doing this, you need a plan, a plan you are willing to tell people your part of, employees that you are part of and work with your employees and make it happen. Please send before this committee, hes been forthright of his desire to try and do the things not only in the Postal Services best interest but also the American People and we appreciate him being here. I think it is important to remember the Postal Service specific to economic forces about as much as any organization in this country stretching across the century, fuel prices, labor issues, the things growth and the changes in marketplace are all part of what this postmaster general as containing the delivery of mail which is the mission of the post office so a lot of things are not necessarily their fault but conditions that have to so i happened to see progress and express complements in not only postmaster general. Congressman connolly of this committee and chairman fitzpatrick a resolution honoring our Nations Public Service postal workers all across america even in our own Congressional Districts so that you are getting the government running all of you are workers your hard work and sacrifice do not find this committee of former chair continuously led efforts to acknowledge and appreciate our Public Servants and is a fierce defender ofthe federal workforce. Congressman connolly , i want to say to i know most of you join me in saying the attack on his staff earlier this week is weighing heavily on his mind and weighing heavily on the minds of all of us when we are democrats or republicans, we are all equally devastated by the senseless violence occurred and we are all praying for ecu mister dejoy, welcome back. The last time you were here we were all masked and though we had our differences in pastime before his old discussion through the pandemic baltimore maryland the worst ontime delivery in the nation by far. Now that mail delivery is improving maryland is experiencing the worst spikes in males particularly in festa, potomac and chevy chase maryland moreover the Us Postal Inspection Service report said robberies of postal carriers have increased by 78 percent resulting in nearly 500 robberies alone 2022 west i find absolutely amazing most of us grew up in an america where postal workers will not be wrong robberies of letter carriers are specifically we believe looking for one thing. The socalled arrow keys which grant access to mailboxes across the entire code associated with that this provides actors with ample opportunities to steal checks and read them, to withdraw access to lots of money from the victims for the mail recipients to other potential crimes so we are here for a number of things but were also here about this im concerned about the thousands of dollars a Single Family was a check gets stolen and often times is concerned about the cd of our postal carriers by senseless criminals who we have to find, prosecute and send off to jail to cut these costs, the Postal Service as i understand it increased its reliability on private sector to deliver mail the results for lack of a better term proven to be dont use this lightly the results often and fail in the past three years alone thirdparty Trucking Companies have been involved in 68 fatal crashes which cost the lives of 79 people we expect the Postal Service will job seriously to deliver mail securely and safely and yet it appears the Postal Service cannot guarantee following the safety of individuals and in some instances seems to have prioritized cost savings strategies of the cd that i just mentioned that people who have their lives these thirdparty carriers are postal carriers for speeding sure their employer which is you mister dejoy is focusing all resources necessary to ensure the safety of its carriers the timeliness of the mail that they are charged with delivering go Ranking Member raskin and myself send a letter to the postmaster general requesting the Postal Service is detailed response to this alarming threat we are all facing and particularly at 600,000 postal employees could possibly face for just doing their job so i would ask ask that we can submit this letter for the record. I look forward mister dejoy to all your responses the 10 year plan that we all had a lot of discourse and discussion around 54 million americans interested Postal Service to deliver just last year their Midterm Election balance visually on time for first class standards which is now classified within one to five days while the Postal Service has delivered 99 percent of mail in balance on time, were still concerned 640,000 arrived late and we think well over a 99 percent or 100 percent is the goal, i just know its a tough job want to commend in women with seriously because there was concern over whether those would be a as they should be congress that in to address the financial is the of the bipartisan postal reform to 25 two which fortunately provided significant Financial Relief to the Postal Service many archaic requirements to refund Postal Service Retiree Health benefits and moved most retirees into medicare. So theres a lot that we want to talk about mister dejoy. I want to in you for your testimony im looking forward to hearing more about those things and many of the things we in the may not be aware of the chair and i are also charged with conducting true and meaningful oversight to live in florida you overcome the challenges that you face by sharing with us as much as you can so that we might be partners in that process i want to thank the chair and yield back anytime i have remaining thank you very much, we do need to remember that today is about a man and women, the veterans, the people who are part of not just the Postal Service but also for the Postal Service and we remember our friends in the Capital Police who are providing us the cd we do with that said i like to yield to the gentleman that time he needs. The gentleman from virginia mister connolly is displaying the subcommittee for dylans readiness. Let me thank you and my friends for the heart comments. I just wanted to to thank all my colleagues on both sides of the. Ive been here 15 Years Experience the collapse of partisanship over a human issue. And i cant tell you how much i see that talking with Heidi Jeffries and Kevin Mccarthy talking with Steve Scalise and so many colleagues offering their support. One of the heroes in the story was the post man. Hecame to the office while the attack was going on. And it startled me to see it and that allowed the woman who was being beaten on the head to escape. And hes sort of an unsung hero in our story i just want to express gratitude colleagues on both sides of the for their consideration and very sympathetic response to what is a very difficult situation i appreciate it. Thank you and you know there are people on this committee who expressed sorrow for what happened but we also recognize mister dejoy one of your own capacity was the worst circumstance. Would it be inappropriate to offer a prayer of those colleagues that were injured, without the appropriate or not . Would wish to make a statement i will recognize the gentleman. My statements will be a prayer gear more we thank you for this body and thank the men and women are here as we ask you reviewing hands on these goals were injured rather connollys office and we ask the great physician that you are that you heal them in body soul and spirit in christ name i pray, amen. The german youll have to sign i went to before we welcome the postmaster general to acknowledge the chairman of the committee mister kohler, the gentleman from kentucky. Thank you for being here today and for your instructive nature that you began from the time you were a Ranking Member providing the confidence to the Postal Service we can work on these issues also that gentleman from maryland mister raskin i want to thank him for taking time to be here for this important time lewis dejoy was appointed postmaster general and chief executive officer of the u. S. Postal service in june 2020 prior to becoming husband will be added 35 years of experience managing a successful nationwide logistics company. Postmaster dejoy a room for a plan which is signed into law, a 10 year Improvement Plan i think to make the Postal Service sustainable without compromising its mission to deliver mail in molestation there are specific goals established at the church was aware of want to thank him for being here today pursuant to committee will 9g awareness will now please rise and raise their right hand mister dejoy, welcome. Do you solemnly swear for the testimony youre about to give is the truth, truth and nothing but the truth so you god . reflect the gentleman, this answer in the mister dejoy, we appreciate you being here and will forward to your testimony let me remindb you have read your written statement and it will appear in the folder in your testimony five minutes i assure you you will be here probably till 2 00 this afternoon to answer our questions on it is on as members can hear you ask that you would ask members to politely confine your comments to those things and then when the light comes back on we will ask that you ask those questions. I recognize the postmaster general angela is now recognized for five minutes. Thank you for your questions and Ranking Member, chairman comer, member raskin for a deliverance of the american plan i submitted as part of my written testimony i recently released to the fa progress reports which contains news on our progress since the fa that the sra implementation highlights simultaneously with transforming the organization we have improved our service, stabilized our force, expanded our capacity, to modernize our network and two years into a 10 year plan we didnt have Opportunity Financial losses. When i arrived here in june 2020 besides being in the middle of a pandemic and in a highly sensationalized clinical environment of financial operational and organizational tradition of the Postal Service has so deteriorated ability to serve the nation was in jeopardy perilous condition was the result of years of posturing, complacency , regulation, misplaced actions and interactions focused on narrow parochial interests failed to confront elizabeth evidence. This collective failure produce catastrophic consequences the organization then faced. Most surprisingly nowhere to be found was a comprehensive plan with the Postal Service on the right track for the future even though the alarms and bells and in writing one and a where these conditions when i accepted that commission offered by a board of governors who had a charge to fix the Postal Service so why are they bringing these conditions off now . I want to be sure we have our eyes wide open on the magnitude of the problem we need to fix, that we as the reasons why is we make this significant transformative changes are outlined in the plan that we remain diligent not to repeat those mistakes in the past. So how have we done so far and are in a difficult environment during the pandemic facing extreme demands for service by our operational growth i worked in tandem with my team and with the support of our board of governors to introduce a deliverance for plan that we all got working on. Today we are in a substantially better position for over two years ago we made Great Success pursuing the objectives of the plan and our whole organization is playing professional tactics that will improve our operation position, reduce our cost of performance, increase service land, grow our revenue to provide for yourhouse. I would like to highlight are as follows release of the plan service has been moved to near where 90 percent of the population received their mailing packages within three days firstclass mail takes an average of 2. 5 days from origin to destination the Postal Service has delivered on to successful season and work successfully with bovine ministration deliver 10 million tests to the american public. These operations demonstrate our ability to ramp up to meet regulatory needs of our nation for both personal purposes and in our government capacity and in response to the national and local emergencies as part of thecountrys critical infrastructure. We have to learn excellent performance on every election including the energized for the election which took place and in that regard we absolutely have fulfilled our role on multiple occasions as part of the nations doctoral process when election officials. We improved the quality of Career Prospects for our workforce by converting 125 thousand employees three years of fulltime and quality of their work advances to their workplace and how our employees so they can help us achieve success. And most importantly we are an organization with leadership and management at his playing ross and comprehensive strategies that will continue to sponsor our transforming our culture to one of these is to worldclass reforms and im out of the accomplishments of our Management Team and leaders and the women and men of the United States Postal Service im excited to continue our Work Together to finish what we have started to bring new life to our organization and tackle the remaining problems we have we continue to serve the American People another 15 years. Ranking member and members of the committee you for your support forward to answering your questions. Thank you very much. I believe your Opening Statement and conversations which you only had with not only all was in this subcommittee is important to note there are many of these factors that seemingly come in your purview that are difficult tasks but some that require personal attention and a continued part of your plan. It is not lost on any of us that there are Economic Conditions that indeed your ability to make changes but there also are daytoday operational issues which we believe need to be addressed. Today youre going to hear from members of Congress Bring to you and your team very specific examples of items. Ive had with the Congressional District i love these represent and in Travis County texas which is often for my entire service in texas and they seem to be around what would be friendly to our offer or the, these large effective for your service to handle may themselves a target. Can you provide me or this subcommittee with any insight into how you view these large mailboxes and im not sure what you call them but these large areas that then can be broken into and hundreds of packages can be stolen and then that correspondingly the need to have people in those areas have to go to the post office, stand in line and then have a replacement therein. This is part of a crime problem that you have to deal with. Sir, do you have anycomments that specifically . I do. Youre referring what we would call across the boxes which was signed in 2012 by the organization into newly developing areas as our mail volume was coming down significantly we were beginning to the Great Recession we were losing 10 million a year and naturally world looking for ways to get mail into communities start to let the amounts of travel carrier had to do to get the mail was growing significantly. Of course the boxes were effective and effective time when crime was less. We, as a continuing, is probably the largest number of phone calls i get about neighborhoods on boxes instead of postal boxes is something we will look as we move forward in part of our delivery as it becomes mandatory also update our targets just like the po box is a target. Like any access to our system is in fact a target we need to defend against. We are looking at different types of double validation and keys, stealing a lot, stealing our keys as an ongoing problem that we are addressing 40,000 new locks coming into play, that will be time to our carriers handheld device for double validation and can also return. Looking at carting our boxes but some ofthese , 80 change so is ready democrat. But we recognize and i recognize that our success is the ability of people to conduct commerce through the Postal Service and crime is often off and lawlessness has always been a deterrent to commerce and we are looking at a number of ways of trying to address both the residential of your having a po box or not wishes for commercial purposes from our standpoint or from the safety and sanctity of the mail people in our carriers. So its something that we briefed the committee and Congress Last week on some of the initiatives that were rolling out expanding part of our daily discussions just how do we address this . I would ask that much of this has to do with the attention to the crime that the crime gets when we do in fact catch people. Mail crime is not foremost federal crime, is not one of the things you run to prosecute at all of this plays into the whole situation and creates really an increasing nature of these happenings. I believe that your insistence on being open about the discussion of this issue, your openness to the frailties that are perceived not only by local Law Enforcement but also making sure that we get to a better answer will help us get there and i appreciate your discussion. I will be pleased to stay with you on this issue. I think the gentleman would lead youll five minutes to the Ranking Member. Thank you very much mister chairman. Mister dejoy i want to go back to the announcement of steps to reduce postal crime that the Postal Service announced last week and a key part of that is the replacement of the socalled era locks which are kind of skeleton key i talked about earlier. Im glad to hear that somebodys thinking now about the double validation effort can you tell me or this day in addition to that are there other Safety Measures that they thought of electronic or otherwise that might get us to where we need to be using this conference recognition by carriers . So one of the things that were doing i was looking at ways of pardoning our boxes. That is we have 11,000 new ones that are rolling out this summer. And were looking at buying 20,000 going forward. That was part access and we will also have these new entry devices. We are exploring with regard to t another option that kind of makes the, i forget which one it is either a dome or a kingdom on a daily basis we can prove electronic medication reallocate the entry process of the sea. So our engineering of our team along with our retail deliveries you are working. I get briefed on a number of different options to prevent basic key access which is a lot and in key access of the reason for all the carriers of the crime against carriers is to actually steal the key. These keys are on the dark when 45, six, 7000 but he so we need to get out of those. This delivery that coming through right now i signed off on your hygiene issue was getting this equipment into the marketplace. Those are the two big things with the keys and heartening the device itself. The collection boxes. We have with this recent announcement we have put teams out into the community, several communities to work with local Law Enforcement to try and make sure we identify hotspot areas that well have been frequently repetitively through the year we had locations that have been attacked over five or six times a year working without employees and conveys, asking people to be more alert. I mentioned in my opening remarks but told that we had been experiencing in baltimore both in terms of delivery which has started to add so much but also in terms of the attacks on postal employees and i mentioned particularly in other places in maryland that has, chevy chase, potomac increased going on and you get processes of when you expect to have all of these locks installed and how youre doing is based on the crime figure were the region or is it based on Something Else that you are getting postal carriers . So the quantity of locations we have boxes in the millions the delivery, we are through the delivery case is very dependent on the supply chain. This is a several year project to tighten up the way we need to do it. Its not going to be complete without some combined efforts on reducing crime in these particular areas with regard to how and where they go is interesting postal crime doesnt necessarily match all design what you need is a crime in areas where there tend to be more highvalue in postal boxes is where these train thieves and lawbreakers go. So they even reroute mail in those cases. Its something. Inspection Service Works in a very detailed manner so we have good feasibility on crime and incidents that happen and also it will take several years to get to a place where you and i will both be happy with. I mentioned earlier that Ranking Member raskin and myself, mister connolly had written a letter to you which i assume you received because were concerned about the 600,000 postal employees trying to do their job coming up against all search of violence i dont know in the last eight hours you had a chance to put together a response but offthecuff is the status of review what you think that responsemight look like . To be honest with you i was not in the Office Yesterday when it came in and i havent had a chance to digest it so i would hesitate to give a response but in general with regards to protecting our employees, i too am concerned about the exposure of our employees to the criminal aspects that are occurring throughout the nation. My time is up but can you tell us when we might expect that western mark. Less than 10 days. Chairman. That is time. The young gentleman from tennessee is now recognized for five minutes. I appreciate your leadership on this issue. Tony work are false and good friends. Mister dejoy the last time we talked i yell at you. Ill try not to do that this time im passionate about my constituents and problems they are having thank you for being here. I wanted to start by assessing issues constituents have with the us Postal Service. These articles in knoxville i cannot get mail delivered over a week in some instances businesses cannot send invoices to receive payments and since ive been in congress it seems to progressively get worse. Im not sure if thats due to my leadership or what but mail deliveries are hurting families in our community. How is the delivery for america plan addressing Service Performance . First of all im not aware of particular problems in knoxville and i can give you a description of where we have issues how theyre having. I will say the delivery for america plan is having a positive impacton mail delivery. 98 percent of the american population, 90 percent receipt their mailing packages within three days. 50 percent of the firstclass mail packages delivered a day in advance so we have with your network is what was a and when you look at next day on the Service Centers that we have to make money off mailing packages get aletter. We have our retail, we fixed a lot of the network is costly but we fixed it is running everything is moving thats no longer a tale of the which is 10 days when i hear our retail Delivery Networks throughout the land and their massive, 31,000 retail centers, deliveries, carriers. 21 55 million delivery points the more certain areas, this is an area where we have a tremendous changing population habits. More people moving into the mountains, working working from all some small addresses for all in 18 months. And we have been bracing to staff to clean up some operational habits that developed throughout the pandemic im going to get there. You said that their increasing these things the Postal Service has built capacity of 16 million packages a day you only carry 28 million a day and explained why the service is excess capacity the volume continues to define. It in 2030 in the fall of 2020 the peak of 20 20 where we had millions of packages running around the nation for weeks before they actually deliver was because we lack a capacity 30 million packages we were going were using were mostly being done by hand. We have so a lot of agencies there we have to come up with methodology quickly do not experience that again the next be in one of the ways we did was to create advanced location and 250 sorting machines and geographical span so were looking at the evil we have to cover the area doesnt mean we got made packages. We process it is peace and families. Im going to run out of time and i see where but could you give us a brief explanation of argent delivery and what percentage of argent delivery request . I have to get back to you on the. Seems like everybody in the industry is working ahead with this economic environment, to put off expanding operations but the Postal Service continues to move ahead with investments in new equipment facilities are you getting your moneys worth from those investments whose paying for is there an expected time line or return on his investment . There is a timeline, we plan to allow a new network over the next 3 to 5 years. Its what our strategy is we have a tremendous embedded infrastructure that has been significant, significantly deteriorated. Deferred maintenance of six to seven dollars this is what the expansion is when we come this now we are locations we mail packages across the nation back into the locations, were just going to be consolidated so we spend, we are getting our money. We have to execute and thats not a thing, the yield of 16 in the operation, the organization is operating more professionally with more organized mass because we have to compete with the commercial place to get our yes, im pretty confident that we are, we have a very deliberate process. We have a longterm plan that sets parameters that we work through and guide our investments for review and completed. Were not the same bureaucratic type of organization we were in the past because i dont get this time, well get this done in a timeframe where run out of money. Im , i apologize. Actually this time i appreciate. The Ranking Member of the committee mister raskin is recognized. Mister dejoy more than 2000 postal carriers sold or robbed quite funny. Postal service announced last week that 305 have been targeted since or even the first half of fiscal year 2023. Do you think that in supporting the Postal Service are increasingly becoming more prevalent. The problem is getting more serious and yet despite this increase in crime, targeting letter carriers the Postal Service has announced actions last weekto address postal crime seem to me to be light on proactive protection for letter carriers. The proposal focuses on heartening Digital Infrastructure which is of course helpful in terms of preventing mail theft but it doesnt do anything to keep the postal workers saber when theyre out on the rounds. One option seems noticeably absent from the plan that would both reduce mail theft and protect postal workers which is to allow Postal Police officers to protect letter carriers by not confining them solely to the physical facilities of the post office. For more than 50 years Police Officers have been responsible for protecting customers property and employees in 2020 Postal Service are promptly declared Postal Police officers would no longer be allowed to perform rituals to prevent mail theft or prevent letter carriers unless the theft or violation takes place directly on Postal Service premises. That just seems baffling to me. Prior to this point the Postal Police perform their duties wherever mail theft with her so mister postmaster given the increase in tax on letter carriers that we are hearing about and seeing within our districts with the increase in postal theft why has the Postal Service continued to prevent Postal Police officers from doing their jobs and keeping postal workers and our mail sent by traveling to wherever the problems are in place . Thank you Ranking Member. First thing with regard to the things that were hard carriers travel in the line of fire. If we reduce crime these particularlocations , reduce the availability to commit crime by stopping the arrow key, heartening the boxes, they will venture into less of these types of activities. That is one of the reasons that were looking at proceeding in this matter. With. Can i follow up on that and it seems its a little counterintuitive if the officers are assignedjust to the physical stations. And it becomes clear that the letter carriers are exposed, that will deepen their vulnerability to being tax, rob on the road, assaulted and so on. With regard to Postal Police. I travel the nation. I enjoy my interactions with the Postal Police also and if i had 60,000 of them, i would come to you and ask for the authority to do what youre asking us to do. I do. I have 680 actual the streets. They havent done that in the past. It was with, the concept they were out patrolling the streets, protecting the carriers is not really what was true we dont have the Legal Authority to do that we have this throughout the country in just about everything that we did for this Management Team over is not what their role was there not allowed to do that. So youre saying we dont have Statutory Authority to protect the mailbox i wasnt aware of that because i they were doing that before. Files only have 600 places they are is where our people are. This is where they need to be. Even if you know theres certainly carriers being targeted in different places, in particular routes that are being subject to organize tax. I can assure you we also lazy being targeted when i say Postal Inspection Service is all over it also we have relationships with local task force thomas throughout the country. And so forth but its a big country and were a small group i only have about 600 of those guys too. We have good relationships federal Law Enforcement in the areas also local lawenforcement. We Work Together to use existing resources to keep the mail a letter carriers say thank you for your indulgence chairman. We now recognize the policy chairman from 45 minutes. Thank you for being here. The Postal Service has continued to lose money and recently came the Postal Service has risen 2023 obviously havent happened. Do you have a investment when the Postal Service might be breakeven mark. Try to reconcile that right now. Theres three reasons we did not make our targets and one, csrs administrative action was in our plan. Thats 3 billion in our current p l this year two inflation was way above what we predicted inflation would be in that plan we all the raising prices is always in arrears. 2 billion. Then we tried to end the middle of the process of doing this week needed to focus first on getting keeping service and getting into a position where we can start making tactical moves like significant amounts of volume off of air to ground at the dollars of our run these other things. Its the place just a little more rope and we went were coming in six months into this. We need to move. We can get back on track with this. I see we are targets of money are for us to get just by improving our Operational Performance and growing our business we are aligned. Were not happy with significant events that we needed to deal with. You actually answer my next question about the impact of inflation and i guess i also wonder how things are impacted your workforce dissipation having enough people to do the job that needed to be done, have you had difficultygetting people to work . Id say its different in different functions and areas within our plant plant processing Operations First of all ive converted 125,000 people from three career two fulltime positions within the United States Postal Service that dramatically increases our turnover rate and heres the individual to the corporation so from that standpoint for the most part the city today is ready high other than in certain areas that the two percent ever having a problem on delivery out of. You may pretty significant changes to the delivery for america plan. Really to do the changes take into account the probability of a lower volume of regular mail packages potential for a doctor possibly procession in the economy did you take that into account . So we do forecast for that. What i would tell you sir is we are in the process of preparing a 15 year bond that fell over the place. So for you in terms of our longterm strategy is not going to change the infrastructure rehabilitation , that we need to do. And we have confidence in the long run the country will get through its economic problems we will be back to business and we need to. The Postal Service needs to the psr a. We need to deliver mail is an integrated manner. I want to transition to something you have to do with the pensions for your employees the post office are limited in what they had invested several treasury youve got to our 98 million in assets and employee pensions. If you have the opportunity to have a sound Investment Strategy asked federal employees retirement plan, some of the projections ive seen it could be 1. 2 trillion and i just wonder what the barriers are keeps the Postal Service from adopting a different model. You will of the federal employees. It is this something that we ought to be looked into in this company . This is one of the day initiatives that are chairman martinez have asked our oig to take a look at. It is about 700 instead of being in a deficit we would be at 700 billion. It changes the whole idea of what the Organization Needs to do. It would be a legislative artist just like csrs was an administrator requirements is the same thing postal funds because all our money is raised by selling postal box and then we went into the federal treasury to manage for our retirement. We have the same thing with csr. When the Postal Service was established in 1970 we didnt do a very accurate job of what liability should have stayed with the federal government what liabilities 80 our longterm retirement and both of those things would significantly change demands on our cash flow which my personal opinion is mail is no longer a monopoly is an obligation. We had 3 billion of mail, probablycost us 65 billion to deliver it. So we have to get our fresh share of packages and thats what were trying to do in aligning these things. These are Financial Burdens that we have we believe we should. So anything this congress can do to address both csrs reforms a portion of our retirement investments to have a little more personal appeal to it would be extremely helpful. To the organizations longterm sustainability. The chairman. The gentleman youll spend his time. Gentleman from vermont is recognized for fiveminutes. Thank you mister chair. Before my line of questioning unanimous consent to insert into the record article that appears to run counter to earlier testimony. Testimony is the record. Brings this article mister dejoy the union said at regularly objected to the protection and Community Policing full to ensure the safety of letter carriers and other Postal Service personnelwhich seems to run his. You wish to clarify . I stand by my statement. You can take what you wantto believe. Actually . What do you want me to say that we have people that say a lot of things. Thank you for being here. Appreciated. Moral state from vermont and i know the Postal Service is absolutely essential service not just to vermont but tomorrow and protecting the Postal Service is one of my top parties in Congress According to pew research 91 percent of americans have a favorable view of the Postal Service which clearly makes it popular federal agency which is saying a lot and my Community Members know their postal workers are working incredibly hard and difficult circumstances to be sure packages get delivered on time and i talked to many vermont postal workers we know that the postal workers are going above and beyond to make sure our Rural Communities are getting their letters and packages. Were very grateful for their hard work despite the efforts of vermonters are still going with service delays in mail and packages and i wanted to continue to Work Together to make sure that we support postal workers and ensure vermonters get mail on time. My concern is mister dejoy the delivery for america plan over removing operations by resorting from most post offices relocating these operations to massive new sorting and Delivery Centers many vermonters from basis here at the opening of these Delivery Centers are the First Step Towards closing their local post office so im wondering if you can assure the public at your plan will not result in reductions to Retail Operations for service. Our plan for sorting and Delivery Centers is something that can save service to our nation we had a 50yearold male delivery operation that is geared for twice the mail and a 10th of a cubic volume of our package delivery. Now we need to run mail and we had a terrible transportation system. Mister dejoy im sorry to interrupt a lot to get the part of the question is will you plan result in reductions to Retail Operations or service, the question. Rolling on this network will not result in areduction of retail. Reason why im so fiercely protective of the Postal Service is because its not just vermont, is Rural America is a handson postal operations without continued attention to our rural areas i really fear our communities will continue to suffer and this is not good for the, is not good for our economy, is not before so will you maintaining the size and work hours of the postal workforce. I cannot possibly commit to something so wide. I wouldnt even know how to understand what youre asking me to to. Let me rephrase that you understand that rural is in a different situation with needing Postal Service. The question is in contrastwith rural. We are in fact trying to change rules with our union. Where i people in the Rural Communities with which is not where if you have problems instead in these particular areas of the things were doing with legacy processes into his eyes people to make deliveries and in fact the snd see network will enhance at. There are better working conditions, it is further reached the organization is just genetically come in. Its all the way up to management as myself, committed to servicing every access were supposed to service because of times ive nation recovering with a great deal of energy and precision and we know, we have special measures on rural areas that are hotspots that deal with just the sound of tall so we can begin working off. So im in and were going to do the best job we can to continue to serve. I appreciate that. I want to make it really clear that Rural America is in a very different situation and many other parts of this country and we need a vibrant Postal Service regardless of how many individuals are in the area so i appreciate you being here today. Woman hewlettpackard time. The gentleman from South Carolina is recognized for 15 minutes. Anonymously made, not even on the subcommittee will hold a us is so important to have an opportunity to talk with you wave off i started this process in 2017 bibles in over in South Carolina about our post office there. Postal Service Rules the drive up completely. Put locks up front where elderly folks have to crawl in the post office. And retreat their name i dont know how thats feasible from a personal standpoint but the driver boxes been there for a long time. Second issue is location of the postoffice on the United States highway , is at the top of the hill. So when theres a lot of traffic at the post office there are a number of Parking Spaces right in front of all fault. People are sitting in a us highway trying to turn in on a little and createthis safety issue. To look at the post office situation and address some of the issues into the drop boxes or the post office its so pretty came and spoke to Republican Caucus a couple of years ago as a Visitor Center and i met with the chief of staff the chief of staff and i handed him a detailed note whispered in his ear and told him the issue after meeting with the u. S. Postal Service Personnel on the issue. Im here to say i have not heard from you guys at all. He refused to meet with me. You refuse to have personnel from atlanta or colombia meet with me. Ive been to two post offices this year and met with the legislative liaison from my district and asked them. We have heard nothing so im here asking you for a commitment to have personnel at the u. S. Postal service meet with me at about an issue that so important the u. S. Senate got involved. I think i remember my understanding is you havent been given an answer. The answer is you are not willing to meet with me. Say the answer is what the situation was and the changes you are requesting. The answer was if the customer of the u. S. Postal service has complained we dont meet with federal officials. I represent americans who expect their mail. You all have a great job and you do a tremendous job that i represent a large constituency that expects me to be their representative with an agency of the federal government and a least have a conversation and you arent willing to come up and visit. I will visit with you anytime. I dont know if ill go to where you want to. You dont have to. To send somebody. I will take another look and i will take a look at it. I will take a look and ill call you myself and tell you. Someone come to lawrence and take a look on the ground and we could walk through the situation there and talk to Law Enforcement about the issues. Thats fine but i believe in 2018 thereve been a lot of people involved in making decisions about access before me and i have, trying to transform the organization. Im assuming and i cant believe that they made an improper decision. I will provide you the document. I have a commitment we will take somebody and we will take a look at the issue in the second issue is the development and i know you have a lot of developments. The u. S. Postal Service Delivers mail to houses within that development. But new houses that have been built since whatever the date is where new policy went into play the Postal Delivery Service dropped five houses to deliver to the house next door and they wont deliver to the new one. All the land was sold prior to the rule you guys had about new houses and this should be grandfathered in. Theres an issue with trying to build a cluster that the Postal Service when he bit me with this group. Just meet with stakeholders and see if we can reach a solution to this. But i cant believe a postal delivery person would drive by house deliver mail to nextdoor and skip the house that was recently built. Its its in a development where the land was sold prior to the rulemaking of the u. S. Postal service. Can i get a commitment that you guys will meet with the people in the village and it is not to be the local postal operators that nobody will calm and have a meeting with stakeholders. There are a lot of things you would not believe and a lot of things that i cannot believe that we are trying to straighten out a balance with their services with the legacy rules are in terms of will it do what every individual american wants in terms of service. Its almost a magical power to do. So why he passes that collection box theres probably a rule that says thats what we do. And thats ludicrous. Probably, i agree i have a list of thousand miles long. A its a unique situation that something needs to change the people have their mail delivered. I want to thank you for committing to looking cassettes looking at some of those things. When we got there we hand a 153 billiondollar negative Balance Sheet losing 10 or 12 billion a year. Still a delivery person is going right by not delivering to a house. I thank the gentleman from South Carolina and general dejoy i was aware of the gentleman this morning. Perhaps this is new or not there not new. Ive will commit to the gentleman that i will engage your appropriate Government Relations people and that we will sit down next week. I think its important that whether its mr. Mfume or or myself of this subcommittee personally takes the responsibility to effectively meet with the gentleman from South Carolina and your staff so i would ask you not have to call yourself a rather your Government Affairs people would be in touch with us or they will set up that meeting. I think part of what you are trying to do is to run a large operation in what the gentleman from South Carolina is trying to do is to make sure he effectively deals with you and you with him so i would let you know on the Public Record whether its myself or mr. Mfume willing gauge and a positive way to make progress and i thank the gentleman from South Carolina for his time. The gentleman yields back his time. Mr. Timmins yields back his time at the gentle wind from the district of columbia missed martin is recognized for five minutes. Thank you. Mr. Dejoy i want to note one of my own top Postal Service priorities is to look at mail theft and attacks on Postal Service employees. I have introduce postal sister is a Security Camera act which would require that subject to appropriations for Public Service install Security Cameras at each postals facility to check employees. Mr. Dejoy would cameras help with the ongoing highly publicized deaths of mail . So, its not happening in our plants and facilities were cameras would be mostly used it. They were put on the streets over these areas of crime certainly it would help in terms of investigations. They do serve as a deterrent to crime sometimes but i think within our facilities we have good visibility of whats going on and it doesnt prevented them from happening. It just identifies will what happens afterwards. Certainly cameras on the streets to which many cities and locales are doing does make criminals think twice. Thank you mr. Dejoy. I would like to turn to the Postal Service reform act. We enter into agreements for state local and governments to provide nonPostal Services that provide enhanced value and do not detract from core Postal Services and provide a reasonable contribution to Public Service institutional costs. This gives the Postal Service an opportunity to increase revenue and better serve communities as a onestop shop for certain registration and services and it also authorizes the Postal Service to experiment their products consistent with existing postal law. The Postal Service currently performs nonPostal Services for the federal government. Since the enactment of the Postal Service reform act the Postal Service has not used this authority so mr. Dejoy do you think new authority is an opportunity to provide expanded service to the public while at the same same time bring in muchneeded revenue . Congress led i do. Theres a step to a rehabilitation process in terms of fixing our number one revenue generator which is delivery of mail and delivery of packages and selling more aggressively into the package market. Concurrent with that we are looking at what do we do with our resale and how do we make our retail more vibrant . I love Priority Mail bags but thats not going to drive where we need to make this massive network. We have a lot of ideas but with those ideas i need to have those ideas identify a resource in a project plan and so on and so forth and thats on the table. We are looking at a whole salesforce right now in terms of how and why people, the organizations that pursue projects that they dont have haphazard start so i appreciate the wisdom of the congress to put that in pettinger stand what their intention was. This is a journey for us and thats a Good Initiative and i can assure you that we will have resources dedicated tried to figure out how we capitalize on the opportunity. What kinds of nonPostal Services might the Postal Service pilot . So i think one of the things the way look at it it has the front door and it has arms and legs attached to it that can play something everywhere and so forth. He could be to stop products like we did in the kit program called the Test Kit Program where we delivered 700 million covid test kits. That was using our particular network. Once you have the ability to have infrastructure in these areas what are in fact the services that we will provide . We know we havent Digital Identity but there are a lot of different types of services that the communities can use that we would be interested in looking at within the framework of what our regulatory responsibility is and with the vision act business breeds business inactivity breeds activity and so forth. Something where we are in the early stages of looking at how do we repurpose our whole Retail Network and reestablished it. You are looking at a shared workplace with Small Businesses in looking at lockboxes and stocking critical infrastructure, critical products for hospitals and Service Centers and so forth. There is our lot that we can do in looking at some of the services that are needed in the commercial marketplace. Unless available in some of these locations, thats a good role for us to play with our physical Distribution Capabilities and our retail stature and presence. We are going to chase after this stuff. Thank you mr. Chairman. Digital woman yields back her time. The gentleman from South Carolina is recognized for five minutes. Thank you mr. Chairman for having this hearing today in much like the gentleman from South Carolina my focus will be very localized. Mr. Postmaster general and want to thank you for the work you are doing. I appreciate you being here today. We have noticed recently theres a post office that was burned down in South Carolina in 2021 in june and at that time the post office the u. S. Ts committed to completing a finished replacement of that post office by early this year. If you look at the site as it stands now there are mail trucks that facilitate as much as they came but theres nothing there, theres no building and not even breaking ground at the site. We have frustration quite frankly that we were not getting getting and when i was in the state legislature by called on agency someone would get back to me within 24 to 48 hours. Our role is to facilitate information to the people we represent a quite frankly for a little bit we werent getting anywhere with staff about what was going on and what was causing these delays and why was ground not being broken and why they didnt commit in 2021 to complete the post office early this year and we havent even started. We are trying to facilitate that information so i appreciate last week your office responded to a letter that we had written informing us the construction construction of the new post office. Do you know of any instances other than South Carolina were offices have been destroyed or damaged and not rebuilt in a timely manner . C i could not give you specifics but there are a lot of instances that existed around the organization that work conditions from a fence from time and so forth. Theres a long list of things we need to fix so im not going to articulate. 7 billion of deferred maintenance so and we also didnt have money in 2020. Im glad we have it now and i will take a look at that when i get back to the office and we will see if we can move it along. I appreciate that and with my remaining time to me facilitating Accurate Information and helping constituents is my top party. I share that with other people particularly as the gentlewoman from vermont said particularly in Rural Communities. Their complaints about them not getting the service they need. Its crucial because not to be that resource for our constituents and we want to make the post office look good. Effective mitigation requires if its just coming from our offices and not with you thats a big problem. Recently the mayor from South Carolina came to my office and im changing lanes here and heres an excerpt of the letter he sent. With the u. S. Ts permission the city of marion would dig up all built plants in front of property with an excellent garden club in marion and theyd be happy to reply the area. I guess theres an existing policy that would prohibit clubs from beautifying the u. S. Ts property and is that an existence and why . We had 900 policy magnets that havent done anything in 30 years in the process of going through them right now. What i would say im aware of the communication problems that you have had from the field back up to headquarters. To have direct communication and we are making those changes and working on improving our boys with all of our constituents and stakeholders. That is something that is as i see it on the number one critic of our organization. We are making great changes in that but its going to take time to them make it through the whole country and its unfortunate as you move into areas that are less concentrated it seems to be the last one. Thank you for your time and in conclusion i would welcome the opportunity and there are several other local issues that i have that have been addressed to me and i would welcome the opportunity to work with your staff to get good information on the policies that exist the problem with performance whatever the case is that our role is to advocate and help further get her constituents Accurate Information as to why we cant continue that dialogue. I would really appreciate that. My assistant is here and hed be happy to reach out to you. I would like to note on both sides of this ill we have taken the time to effectively provide their feedback and i want to say thank you to the members for maintaining that high level of professionalism along with the postmaster general in his response and i thank them and recognize that. The gentleman yields back his time and now we will go to the gentleman from texas. Thank you. Thank you mr. Postmaster general for being here. My brandnew member of congress here in the first few months. I expected to get lots of emails and notes about veterans trying to navigate the Health Care System and folks trying to navigate the immigration system but what ive been surprised by has been the number of letter carriers and postal workers reaching out to my office about concerns in their workplace. I had asked my staff to start giving me a summary in the list was longer than what i could put in so i asked for five examples of constituents and usps about their issues and one of them a worker having an allergic reaction potentially with lifethreatening consequences being pushed to go out and deliver the mail in the midst of that allergic reaction. Second people reaching out about being injured on the job and their supervisor approving continuation of their pay has that request went further up the food chain that request being denied. Third a postal worker in san antonio holding a thermometer in his vehicle and a thermometer showing 136 degrees. A constituent reaching out saying theyve been injured on the job as a postal worker and the injury required surgery and reaching out to us trying to get help because they werent able to get help at the workplace getting that surgery covered. Fifth, workers have been concerned about spots being removed at their workplace and theyve been workers that rely on those Parking Spaces with disabilities and the list goes on and on and on and those are really concerning issues to me because not only is it the right thing for us to do to provide a Great Workplace prof federal employees but we know it affects the mail. Could you comment the postmaster general on what it is you are hearing and are these issues that are just affecting my office are you saying these things is more systemic and some of your offices . The consequence of 15 years of bad legislation dramatic change in the economy the Great Recession the reduction of mail and no money in the organization stressed the whole organization which deteriorated just about every relationship and in all lines up. The biggest impact comes down to people working the plans and delivering the mail. Thats awaited his hand is said that the organization i came into. I can tell you we have made tremendous gains in trying to work through that and thats what the delivery for america plan is about. Sit about improving our dialogue and ive spoken to 8000 supervisors when you are talking to your people treat them like you want to be treated and give them direction and when you are disciplining them and when youre having a bad day. This is a conversation i had with the supervisor so theres tension throughout the organization that was allowed to develop because of the conditions. So four of the five things we are continuing to work on training on these types of in interactions and theres confusion and a lot of the work rules but i think systemically we are improving and most people come to work each day and do their jobs at good interactions with management and they go home but we do have these types of issues. The one situation with the vehicle we know its a nation thats why been trying to buy vehicles for two years now. And in texas mr. Dejoy im running at a time and i want to make sure in our next conversation we can lay out what it is we are getting done so we can be responsive to people but some numbers shown to me by my team of noncareer employees with a turnover rate of 40 thats climbing higher up and i hope we are able to address that. I dont know if youd be interested in verifying the number in my San Antonio Office. Were linked to me to auditory employees if those arent rightwing to hear that. If they or we want to intervene to make sure we are moving them to career positions. That is a statistic that is not representative but to what this Management Team has done. I converted, we have converted 125,000. Career people to fulltime. I was called noncareer and we called them. Career and converted and now we are coming off of these numbers the way we are calculated in many people get these in the oig report but at 650,000 employees and a sampled 100 people. Understand and would love to dig into poor example in the San Antonio Office twothirds of the employees are turned over by the end of the year and we can agree there needs to be something done about it. Of the gentleman yields back his time. The gentleman mr. Edwards from North Carolinas recognize. Thank you mr. Chair. Mr. Dejoy thanks for being with us this afternoon and thanks for your service to our country but i cant think of many positions in the federal government that would be less and be able than yours. I can tell you that while the Postal Service is not a perfect system i know many of the hardworking men and women back at home that serve the Postal Service and i know them to be professionals and dedicated and hardworking people. They operate in an imperfect system. And like to turn our attention to elections for just a moment. With a heightened emphasis on absentee ballots or mailin ballots particularly through the pandemic and many of the aspects hour of our election system being called into question the Postal Service has been called into question. I know and serving in the North Carolina legislature we have attempted on a number of occasions to pass legislation that says there have to be a time that there is a cutoff to receive absentee ballots. North carolina just a couple of years ago extended that to nine days which in many folks it creates a question. Our effort has been to eliminate the question about when the cutoff should be and pass legislation that says an absentee ballot should be received by a board of elections by the close of business on election day. Unfortunately there are a lot of people out there that say the post office is so incompetent that they would be disenfranchising voters if we had a cutoff time. What could i take back to those folks to give them confidence in our system that the Postal Service is in fact capable of allowing state legislatures to create a specific deadline . I want to be careful here. Im not opining on any rules or anything that i want to tell you about the United States Postal Service and its performance in elections. We have had a very good performance in the elections and the people, and this was before i got here. The organization was committed and if people see a ballot on the floor they dive on it to get it delivered. What we have done is we improve our processes which we have significantly and the overall mail system to flow through a ballots is in fact better. We have setup set up a separate organization to monitor this all year long and interact on information and its the most consistent we have been in the last years. Election rules change all the time so if we get a ballot in time we will deliver it in time, 99point whatever of the time and i would suggest like we have said when we get council and this mail it a week in advance. Dont wait until the last minute. If you want to send a mothers day and you want her to get on mothers day you dont set it the day before so from that standpoint thats what we look at. We have worked with the previous chair and committee on standard mail piece for elections. I cant pay for it in the Postal Service cant pay for it so how do you influence that . From the standpoint as youve seen historically we are reliable in getting it done and you will get more reliable because their whole system will become more reliable as we roll out the process. Thank you for that. Can you tell us, are there any specific procedures that are changed during an election to handle absentee ballots . It that are changed before an election . Right. We have a number of different agreements with different courts and so forth but it really comes down to that we put more emphasis on hunting for a ballot if we get a our hands on is called extraordinary measures and we Keep Post Office is open later we do lot more trips and we do more of everything. Its just a matter of moving mail and packages. We coordinate some offices where to bring stuff in there some turn around that we normally wouldnt do. One of the big misunderstandings is postmarked. We dont post market and a lack of places think we do so we try to postmark a little more and so forth so theres a heightened awareness. We have a Word Committee that kicks in chaired by governor mcreynolds. Part of our organization that i set up when i came in is standing all year round not just for elections, to coordinate specific issues so we have them at hand if we go the extra mile to make sure during the elections every ballot we can deliver we do. Thank you mr. Dejoy and thank you for your service. The gentleman yields back his time. The distinguished gentlewoman from mexico is recognized for five minutes. Thank you bring much mr. Chairman and Ranking Member and thank you mr. Dejoy for being with us here today. I want to start out by thanking all of our usps staff and the staff sitting behind you. Of course all of our postal workers and letter carriers not only my district but across the country who day in and day out deliver the mail across all of our communities and are really the backbone of our communities. They represent new mexicos first Congressional District which includes the Albuquerque Metro area and just over half a dozen Rural Communities and issues abound broome Postal Service are really crucial for the communities i represent. In particular as we have been heading into this hearing weve been hearing from a lot of letter carriers about issues around new policies and the Postal Service is implementing about rural compensation. I want to focus my attention especially on these issues. The first question i want to ask you mr. Dejoy is how much consultation the consul the Postal Service did with rankandfile letter carriers despite implementing policy. The world rural carrier pay assessment . Can you characterize that as we heard from folks that worked in our district that they didnt find out about it until its actually being implemented. So this was a decision that was made in 2012 between the union and the Postal Service and we worked, by 2019 we had the structure to decide how was going to be ruled out. We did a sampling that year for 4000 routes and came up with some adjustments that need to be made and consultation with the union are h. R. Department we began to roll the process out across the nation. I dont know every single detail as to how this got communicated but i cant imagine it wasnt effectively communicated to everybody. Now the result of it is its unfortunate because a lot of it has resulted in the aggregation of mail declined over 10 years, impacting the rural carrier with one shot. Mr. Dejoy among the many concerns and in fact we just highlighted about not knowing how it was communicated down to the rankandfile was the impact its going to have on rural carrier pay. Are you aware that 66 of our carriers are going to lose pay in their paychecks because of this adjustment . Yes, i am and what i said was, im aware of my h. R. Department and that Union Representatives working to deliver the message. Im not aware of the specific details. Mr. Dejoy i apologize for interesting. Because they are short time i think something of a significant thats going to affect 66 of our rural carriers and rural coverage of our mail service certainly and how that gets communicated affects the likelihood of our carriers and effects are carriers and it affects our currencies and local economies. My question is in addition to improving kind occasion with the staff of the Postal Service what plans has usps put into place to ensure this doesnt affect recruitment and retention of carriers as well as Service Delivery and rural areas . We have worked with our Union Leadership and we continue with our recruiting. They have been significantly enhanced. I dont believe the cut is 60 on it and i believe all the participants were told and have known that this was coming. Its an important genetic consequence. By the same token we need to align the compensation for the work that is being done. While i appreciate your business approach to the solvency issues of the Postal Service our postal workers are members of our community. They need a living wage. They need safe working conditions. We need to assure the livelihoods of our communities and part of the job as a federal agencies to ensure that we are adequately insuring the safety and safe working conditions of our workers and i do want to note the issue that mr. Casar brought up are true. Long hours on the postal workers so these policy changes being implemented at the top and not adequately communicated with the rankandfile letter carriers are problem in our communities so mr. Dejoy i appreciate your service but its crucial we make sure that our postal workers on the ground have a voice and that they are communicated with clearly and we are supporting our postal workers and without i feel back. I disagree with the premise. The channel 1 has yielded her time back. Do you wish for the gentleman to extend your time to receive an answer back . Mr. Chairman i think the gentleman does not seek that time. Thank you very much. Mr. Dejoy when a member yields back their time that time ends and i appreciate it. I think the gentlewoman for her time to the distinguished chairman of the full committee is recognized for five minutes. Thank you mr. Mr. Chairman at postmaster general is good to see her today and we talk often and we have talked often over the past year and a half. We have come a long way in really what i consider one of the most if not the most bipartisan accomplishment last year and congress and certainly in this committee that was passing the postal reform bill. As i said then and i will say it again now i think you are the right person for the job hes taken a lot of bullets and its a tough job. Its a big bureaucracy and you do something that no one in the private sector wants to do and thats deliver the mail six days a week to every single address in america. Id like to talk about one of the centerpieces of your plan has been the Network Modernization. With respect to your plan you are the only postmaster general since ive been in congress that even came up with a plan to reform. Your predecessor always talked about about a plant that never came up with one. When the centerpieces of your plan is Network Modernization and interesting and you are constructing large facilities in urban areas and a smaller number of facilities. Can you help me understand what the benefit of those will be in terms of saving Manpower Needs and support . First of all thank you for your leadership and the legislation. Its a wonderful thing to be a part of so thank you rear leadership. Right now when we look at National Distribution we have moved mail and packages to locations that event haphazardly put together over the last 15 years. It does disaggregate it mallon creates 55,000 a day plus we are doing a lot of air so we are collapsing this and aggregating it into 60 locations in converting those other locations with contractors and insourcing a tremendous amount of work by the end of the day a 1. 6 billion transportation budget, we have a significant amount of adjunct labor and a significant amount of overtime and plan to get three to 4 billion of that and other types of operations for the local transportation delivery has not been addressed in 40 years. If with respect to the facilities that will not be used what he going to do with those . I have not adequately articulated that this is not a consolidation. We have built up a number of police annexes and contractor sites with little functions that could not fit an existing plant and put them there. Those are the places where closing out. Im investing significantly in bringing them back up to stay putting the right equipment and them and redoing employee amenities. We have 226 locations local Processing Centers and we are going back to all these these clients there were close down our last 10 years and reinvigorating them and putting Delivery Centers in modernizing the way distribution needs to be today for the volume we move. Today 65 of the volume moving packages is not average yet we still run the place like we are moving letters and we rehandle all the packages. That is what we are trying to redo. I wish i could say its ingenious but its not. Its obvious. With that in this is my last question feel free to take all the time you need on these important questions, the postal reform act provided you with an infusion of cash and we changed some of the liability that was strapped on the post office. This was in my opinion a lastditch effort to try to to the Postal Service in a position to where it can do what its supposed to do to be selfsustaining. Mail volume continued to decline. How do you see this moving forward in the future to where we can get to a position of self sustainability within the Postal Service . Ive been on record i support the post office. My colleagues on the republican side, we all have concerns with certain aspects of the Postal Service. As a democrat member mentioned its very important in Rural America and no private Company Wants to deliver mail six days a week in Rural America. So what is the future with respect to the fact that we will continue to see declining male and how can we get the Postal Service to where its in a position of sustainability to where congress will not have to infuse more cash . s how much time do we have . However much time the chairman will allow. I certainly appreciate it but i just want to be clear. From my standpoint coming in and changing the organization what cash it became available for the organization. They did not give us an infusion of cash. We had to pay that liability and 10 years to straighten out the west station and back to pushed what we were obligated to pay for six or seven years from now. It was a page ago system and if we get back to the page ago system will have a big problem of put him at the changes that we are trying to make right now but as you know and this was an issue on the bill there are two things. Two inefficiencies within the Postal Service by inefficiency of how we run the place. We have got to fix that. Theres a lot of money there and a lot of working conditions for everybody that works there. Who would have put together a process that handles 25 million packages a day by hand. These are the things that are fixable. Theres a lot of money there but the mission is still inefficient the mission. We deliver to 63 million addresses and some have more packages. That we have to do and we commit to do it but we have to do that efficiently and moving packages and mail together aggregating a network thats in the bill. We will leverage our cost leverage our Conveyor System to every address. That will produce better margins and overall performance and i believe we can become the preferred delivery provider of the nation and a good part of the package of business to be the greenest from an environmental standpoint and i dont believe the American People want trucks open down there streets even in rural areas and as we grow our package list i think i need to get two to 3 billion of package revenue to get these cost and i need to do a quick and i think we are close. Were close to solving these things. Their other areas. We have a lot of unfunded mandates. We brought up the retirement and so forth. This is not a walk in the park. I will peel that tell you what exactly operationally is possible to do. We might have to come up with Something Else that we are full steam ahead on trying to get this done. My hope is the regulators, the Congress Gets overweight because this is a crisis and we need to move. We are taking surveys from every opinion better regular want to do and what we should do and flooding our airways with proving methodologies that have not worked in the past is not helpful. Thank you mr. Chair. The distinguished chairman yields back his time. The gentleman from massachusetts is recognized for five minutes. Thank you mr. Chair and Ranking Member. Mr. Postmaster general will come. I dont think ive seen you since youre signing ceremony at the white house on the postal reform bill which you were very helpful with any played a key role in getting data and i had the opportunity to work on that for about 10 years so certainly happy to see that in the rearview mirror. I want to talk to you about it about a piece of unfinished business. I ask they offered an amendment to the jobs and infrastructure act to provide money for the Postal Service to modernize its fleet. You get 237,000 vehicles and decisive dod you are number one. Many of those are long life and i think thats the term they use for those vehicles. They are supposed to have a 20 year shelf life and some of them are are ready over 30 so we did provide in the affliction reduction act we provided 3 billion in funding and i know in december you committed to ensuring 75 of the nextgeneration delivery vehicles which is probably 66,000 vehicles would be electric vehicles and this is big not just for the Postal Service by bringing the infrastructure into some of our rural committees and suburban communities as well as major cities. I wanted to see if i could get an update from you on where we are on the fleet modernization program. Thank you and thank you for your assistance in the legislation and also the vehicle funding. As you know in december we had been, we came out with 10 because we didnt have a strategy to change our infrastructure and our delivery unit you can even plug a coffee pot and some of these places. We have move forward after we pass the reform bill and it looked a little better and then the capitol and the benefit of the financial standpoint did not come close in terms of implementation from where we. After the 3 billion i dont know if you noticed i met with the white house to figure out our right we need to move forward with a mission in mind and how do we use these monies effectively to keep us stable. I need to commit long after. If you put these in over 1000 facilities so it came up with a plan on how to use at the structure money and that was agreeable and we use that money. Transits will start coming in in december of this year or january, 10,000. They are lefthand drive and a neat more righthand drive. Those will be installed in it at the end of 24 we will start seeing, the end of 24 we will see 25, 26 and 2,720,000 a year on the all electric. All 15,000 will be vehicles which will come in towards will come into her sanity or the next that thats 100 electric vehicles and on infrastructure we have close to 100 sites that will take 100 vehicles each and our old plans that were closed down. The old plans that were closed down but they are to have 5000 apps in that empty parking lot. We are retooling them and putting the money and to create the charging stations and i ordered 14,000 charging stations and we have them in stock. So we are moving out and that 66,009 think im off the line we will have homes for them and i have a parking lot for the first thousand in case the whole infrastructure is not ready but i have a team on it and we are working with aggregating all the different functionalities and we are going to really lead in this emissions rollout and its pretty exciting. That is great. One thing i would want to say in my time is almost appear, you know the pattern of use for the postal vehicles you charge them overnight and you roll out in the morning. For the balance of the day when some of those vehicles come back we have open charging stations and i want you to think about whether the public might be able to have access to those stations and those charging stations if they dont interfere with the postal operations. It might be a great benefit to the general community. We have discussed that and i know you have been interested as other members and the type the words located and when we charge but i think the point is as i was saying earlier with regards to congresswoman norton we have an infrastructure. If this is the way we can be more present in the community we will take a look at that. We first have to get them out and going. Its a monumental task. Thank you and thank you for your courtesy mr. Chairman. I yelled back. The gentleman yields back his time and thank you very much. The gentleman from louisiana mr. Higgins is recognized. Thank you mr. Chairman. Postmaster general dejoy we have met many times and it occurred to me i was looking at when you were sworn in and its probably been the longest three years of your life. I was born in brooklyn, so. [laughter] i think you have earned the epitaph that this guy never quit. You have hung in there and i have to say some of the changes that you are dealing with quite a complex machine. Some of the changes are beyond from the perspective of common sense. Shifting mail to major hubs in putting that on the map if it looks like a good idea from that perspective but when you get down to the reality of taking a piece of mail that scheduled to be delivered half a mile away from a post office in sending the mail 100 miles away to a club to have it distributed to come back these are the kinds of things that when they are pointed out they make no sense but i have to say i believe from my perspective your biggest problem is regulation and you are being regulated to death. Let me point out regarding money in 1980 a stamp was 18 cents and 63 cents now. In 1980 americas total debt was 1 trillion in its 32 trillion now. Congress is in no position to look at the post office and say you know your rates have gone up too much. You receive a tremendous amount of american treasure through budget and appropriations but it seems to me or problems come from regulation. I ask you candidly if you had the regulatory requirements of 1980 and the rates and budget of 2023 how fast could you fix your problem . Well, one quick point, the logistics behind moving the mail has a deal with volume aggregation and so forth so thats why setting that aside mr. Dejoy you say you have a list of a thousand pages of rules you have to follow. You were talking about why a male carrier cant deliver to a house thats next to another house but i talked to an old guy who is retired and he said there used to be maps and mailboxes to determine routes and deliveries. It was pretty much that simple and obviously if the new president had established a mailbox at their home it would just be added to the route in that area. There was a decision made at the branch that required committee studies and tremendous regulatory review. It was a common sense decision but someone moved into the neighborhood a mailbox would be added to that route. If you had that kind of command and control i think a guy like you could fix a lot of these problems. I have to ask you about electric vehicles though. I wasnt going to bring it up. My friend did. I think this may be the worst idea in the history of bad ideas. I think well look back on this, utility vehicles must be robust and rugged. Obviously a postal delivery vehicle goes through alot and as you observe the american citizens that have electric cars, they are casual use vehicles. Friends since a professional hauler or toe were the tozh boats for instant if you have an electric truck you can go 70 or 80 miles with this so how do you intend to make that work in your most rugged environments . Thats a good point and thank you for that question could one of the reasons why we came out with only a 10 acquisition in the beginning, i think we have come to a point where we have carved out we know every single route and what its applicability is through the durability of the vehicle is the same and we know every route where and what type of conditions and at the end of the day from the way of vehicle works today and what our route system is in alaska and everything its only 70 of them, we only get to 70 of the routes. Its Different Levels of return on electric vehicles but at 66,000 that we are moving and now we have a sweet spot of sweet spots in terms of where they are going to go and in terms of where they will be in these facilities. That makes sense. Mr. Dejoy my time has expired and thank you for your service and i yield. The gentleman yields back his time per thank you very much. The gentlewoman from dallas, texas is recognized for five minutes. Thank you so much mr. Chairman tuesdays hearing as one of those moments for both sides of the aisle come together to figure out what we should do to fix the problems that exist within the Postal Service. I want to be clear i support the Postal Service. Ive talked a lot about my mom because she currently works for the irs but when i was a little girl she worked at the post office. She got her introduction into federal service at the post office but she worked as a part timer. She was a male handler who she worked her way up and ended up in a jar. She kind of understands so many levels of the post office. As a member of congress i get to call about the concerns. I want to just kind of put some things into perspective really quickly. I remember when i was growing up is a little girl i was taught how to write letters. Something that i dont know is going on now that the differences when i was growing up we didnt have the internet, not when i was a little girl. So its my perception that once the internet came along, because i know i stopped sending as many letters and started people start using things like email instead and i feel whats going on with the post office is a lack of ability to adapt to the changing environment. Im curious to know and its really to follow up more of what chairman comer was asking about as we are thinking about the future of the post office what are the outofthebox thoughts that we have is we are looking at the fact that we didnt have the internet before which meant every time we wanted to put something in writing for someone we literally were either trying to do a telegram or you were just taking a letter in the preference was to send letters. As youve acknowledged thats not where the bread and butter is for the post office. As someone who also lived in texas which is a little bit more rural than dallas i understand how thinly stretched you all are but what are your thoughts . And what im asking is im asking about, i dont know if thereve been thoughts about drones or whatever Technology May be available which would not only reduce the Carbon Footprint but also would make sure you are not needing the level of staff that is necessary to do some of those routes. They did have a chance to sit down with the postmaster in my area to talk about these things and he talked about the difficulties that he had with hiring and he talked about some of the things have that have been brought up as a relates to crime and its happened with a lot of postal workers. Im curious about that and i will end on this note and allow you to elaborate on your thoughts but in my district ups i believe it is and forgive me if im wrong but they are now doing Autonomous Vehicle testing on a route. I know those that i would consider to be competitors of the post office seemingly are armored a 50 years ahead of us and what they are doing. We are going to be say the preferred provider and the packages are you looking at what the competition is with ups and trying to figure out how do we get on the Playing Field with that because im just curious about the future. Thank you for those comments. Congresswoman we are about 15 years behind in every operating modernday Technology Statistics thing that we do. We have to get our mainstream business working right which is moving mail and packages across the country and delivering mail to people together and thats a huge benefit for us in terms of costs of revenue and in terms of the American People in service and to Rural Communities and so on and so forth. Thats job number one. We have the broken operating model for the second thing is in terms of how do we reimagine our retail around the nation that will be able to build on this increase . We will become if we pull this off an enabler of commerce. Things will get delivered that dont get delivered now from the Postal Service and we will continue in Home Delivery and ecommerce and we are pursuing a number of different issues with that. We are reorganizing our customer outreach, sales and marketing groups to actually start working on solutions for mailers in communities and so on and so forth so we need to be thinking about that as we are amending this broken thing. We will have some good ideas from that. There are a lot of changes i would love to make and if i owned the place i would make some but i dont own the place. Im not a time. If you could just give me one because thats what were having these hearings. If ive an opportunity to produce legislation thats what i want to do. I would move faster is the first thing. The plan is baked but we have a very large Stakeholder Group that has a lot of interest in many things and have witnessed over 13 years whatnot moving the consequence of not moving forward. Thank you very much. The gentlewoman yields back her time. The gentleman my friend from arizona mr. Biggs is rested recognized for five minutes. Appreciate the updates you have given us. In 2018 the trafficking and Overdose Prevention act was sent to law and that was to prevent shipment of sentinel through the mail by requiring advanced electronic inbound packages shipped to the u. S. Postal service. Private carries a bigger car to carry this electronic tracking information as well since 2022. Over last year some of our same college Ritter Office to express concerns about the issues of the excessive number of waivers issued two countries beyond the scope intended by law. The g8 a. Overreport indicates from 2016 to 2021 male and automobiles were the top to convey its types used for drugs that were seized to the data dayton report suggests ebp components made more than 225,000 drug seizures conceal the mail parcels over this time period and id like to submit that to the record record. Without objection it will be entered into the record pace pace back and what we can supply an update on implementation of the stop act. Thank you senator and i dont know if youve noticed. Ive had many many interactions with senator portman is a strong advocate of the stop act and we actually were very much involved in the measurements and the samplings electronic advance postmasters dejoy which is have a short period of time in it but the questions can you be real specific about the amount patient . From a Postal Service standpoint we implement with the state department and cbp tell us to do and we have specific operating requirements. Right now its 85 compliance. We have brought on just last year recently 27 new countries and every time with bring on new countries they are allowed a stepping stone compliance methodology and that brings the overall average down. Mr. With a number of waivers than according to the law theres a lot of it almost everybody is on a waiver right now. Be still my heart. If what are the total amount of drugs concealed that were interdicted . I just fentanyl is probably 30 . Overall i have a whole list marijuana fentanyl. Developed and i dont know this every country is a waiver so the question i was going to ask you what about mail coming from countries that have away from the stop act requirements. Seems like all of them do. We are supposed to have 100 compliance. We have different statistical sampling methods and so forth. Im hoping maybe you could give me some specific data. I have very detailed information on it. I along with everyone else will tell you ive got a couple of local issues and maybe someone on your team can get with us. Thanks for being here postmaster. I yield back. The gentleman yields back his time. Ranking member ms. Lee is recognized for five minutes. Thank you. The delivery for america plan perfectly the part about the consolidation of sorting and Delivery Centers is intended to improve performance and finances. These changes will have major effects on all our local communities and postal workers that raises concern about the syntax that other concerns being heard by leadership. Section 31 of the postal accountability and enhancement act requires the Postal Service to engage and share data with these communities and stakeholders prior to implementing a realignment on the consolidation plan. Mr. Dejoy how does the Postal Service comply with this committee and agent requirement prior to the release particularly about the restructuring of facilities . We made the determination that we complied with every aspect of the law and regulations with regard to the plans. As we move forward we communicate and i cant tell you the amount of communications we have had with congress and other stakeholders. So far we feel very comfortable in terms of what we did. The Postal Regulatory Commission opened a formal public to get more transparency and learn more about the impact yet the Postal Service rejected this ingrained requested it be withdrawn. Mr. Dejoy was a Postal Service objecting to this inquiry meant to make sure you engage with your stakeholders . We engage with their stakeholders and we the Purgatory Commission has overstepped their authority and we are an independent organization and we are charged with the mission of saving the organization. Not the poster read a Tree Commission for the post of and watched the destruction of the organization over the last 15 years and actively participated in the destruction of the organization last 15 years but what we are trying to do is save the organization. What goes on and why they do the things they do i have yet to figure out and im a pretty smart guy. Thank you for that. If your objection is dismissed when you commit to participating in stakeholder forms and pledged not to take further steps to block or delay it . I didnt hear the full question. We have communicated extensively and are communicating extensively to all stakeholders with regard to a reasonable amount of description and taking on and making massive changes. The end of the day where not affecting service. Service will continue and Services Better now and its because of the things we have done within the plant. We will reach 165 million addresses and meet Service Requirements and so forth. We just have to stop the chaos that has been established over the last 15 years. Youve touted projected losses for the decade by more than happy half of the Postal Service has lost 2. 1 billion in 2023 that 75 more than expected. Had explained this complete contradiction in numbers . A couple of ways. In our plan their 3 billion in this years budget over 3 billion of csrs reform that was planned and an administrative order that we are advocating to get. That has not happened. We had almost 2 billion in legislation that was not expected in excess of our projected inflation. The way we bill in the future and currently and then there were additional costs that i kept in place so as we transitioned it didnt Impact Service and that would be another 1. 5 billion. We are not giving up. The place is a little more broke than we figured out in the first five months of being here but we are committed to getting this back on track and moving forward. Thats why the Postal Commission is not helpful if its going to put this whole plan in jeopardy. I want to talk about the electrifying fleets. With time in mind i will close the Postal Service delivers for the nation every day. To be effective it needs feedback from its customers and stakeholders at every possible juncture. Cutting corners to save time or money has longterm effects like erosion of trust in loss of customers. Such a cornerstone of our society has become so politicized and controversial but the Postal Service need to improve transparency and do better for the American People. Thank you and i yield back. The gentleman the gentlelady yields back her time. The general woman from colorado miss boebert is recognized for five minutes. I thank you mr. Chairman. Postmaster general dejoy you talk about 90 of the nations by pollution receiving their mail and packages in three days or less. A portion of mail is delivered on time and rural areas in america . Our overall standard of firstclass mail to the Service Standards is 92 right now. Those are pretty high numbers. I asked that because ive heard my constituents in Rural America who are receiving service from the Postal Service. I know a lot of issues of them brought up today and we are working to get solutions to thank you so much for being here providing answers as we work through this. The struggles we are seeing our veterans and seniors not receiving important prescriptions in a timely manner and postal positions have been unfilled for long periods of time in local post offices have been closed or have had extremely limited hours. Packages have been seen piling up in lobbies and some people did not receive a single piece of mail for three weeks in my district. We timed it in some places and to make matters worse extremely Poor Customer Service is something im hearing a lot of. South of pablo went without if Contract Post Office for approximately six weeks after the contractor who ran it quick because the Postal Service was not honoring his contract. People literally have to drive 30 minutes to pueblo to get their mail and i think you would agree that these things are unacceptable. Postmaster general dejoy an estimated 15,000 rural pharmacies were forced out that the department of Defense Health agency cigna express scripts reimbursement plan and this is because rules across the Third District rely solely on service to receive a prescription. This is cause beckons to go without these prescriptions which are necessary for quality of life for upwards of weeks and due to the delay in the delivery. This is not only happening in our rural areas such as cortez and just about all of these mountain communities but its even happening in major Populated Areas such as in pueblo as mentioned. What steps are you taking to ensure the Postal Service no longer leaves their veterans going for weeks without prescriptions . Specifically in colorado we were made aware of the issue and ive met with senators in all the areas. When did you meet with the senators . A month ago. Okay. It was january to the beginning of february and we, i put a s. W. A. T. Team out into the area and we put 12 or move 12 or 13 carriers and reestablish contracts, highway contracts in the area and we brought in additional management in eight or nine different locations around the mountain areas. They got the service flowing back on. As i said earlier there is a lot of damage done and these remote areas where the longest in the toughest force to get back into stable condition. We are working on it and most of those areas in colorado are significantly better than they were before. I watched the points in dejoy so i think if you had any recent . We have had ongoing issues that have been brought to our attention and specifically there was a period in time of october 2021 when i reached out to you personally and i was denied a meeting. Reached out to may . Yes, i did. This is about the Unacceptable Service we are seeing in the libido post office in my district and Government Relations representative in washington d. C. Responded and said they lie dating staffing issues were not tasking operating hours and they absolutely were. Im glad that you reached out to senators and spoke to them. Im grateful to hear what you are expressing to this committee about what you are doing to address these issues and i hope you work with us personally and with the staff as well because this is something is very important to all americans of thank you very much for your time and i yield back. The general woman is yielded back her time. The gentleman from california is recognized for five minutes. Mr. Postmaster general you are popular guy. I asked for a call from you as well and was denied that request. Let me say thank you for being here and answering questions and i want to thank you for in your testimony mentioning the men and women of the Postal Service. We owe them our best effort in a solid plan to address the problems of the past and to chart a course. Your testimony attaches report delivering for america. Page 11 of that says that i am quoting back the wellbeing of our 635,000 places at the heart of delivering for america and the employees and the facilities they work in. I cant agree more. Im a huge fan of the post office and the men and women who provide service day in and day out to deliver mail. Mr. Support you ever visit post office is, yes or no . Frequently. Frequently. Have the upper visited the usps International Services . I have. But have you ever visited one in custom california . Actually i did before it was an international center. Okay. You believe employers should have to work in a facility that is below 30 degrees . Do you believe that employers should have to work in a facility that is close to 100 degrees . Nope. I have to agree with you. I dont think these are suitable working conditions and osha even though they dont have a specific number they have a temperature range and its farwell away from those. Let me tell you about working conditions in that facility happened to be in my Congressional District and i wrote you a letter about this which i asked for a phonecall about. I will say your staff did respond back. These are working conditions that employees of the u. S. Postal International Service center across california have been faced with. From december of from december 2022 through march of 2023 the employees were working this facility that registered temperatures as low as 28 degrees when it was cold and the building was intended to be a warehouse and not a processing center. It does not have any kind of hvac system and Electrical Capacity there is not sufficient to run enough heaters to regulate the temperature in the building pic i myself went to visit it and join the workers and the men and women who were out protesting against these unacceptable unsuitable conditions. So now that youve been made aware of this what are you committed to try to do to fix this . Congresswoman we have plenty of facilities like that around the country. We have conditions that need to be addressed and we are out addressing them. Are you saying you have a lot of facilities where workers are working in unsafe conditions . There different types of conditions that make workplace activities in terms of productivity and thats a big part of what they build america plan is. In that particular facility part of the process we will release it for shirt time and we are getting out the building and consolidating it to a los angeles facility. We have what we have and when conditions happen and we have people working there and mail flowing we are not always able to respond to these types of conditions the way we would like to. Thats in a coup elation of 15 years worth of neglect. Mr. Dejoy first of mr. Support for zabala 15 years of neglect and i will tell you why. This was a fiveyear lease out hasnt been 15 years and when they edged the least they should have said there needs to be safe working conditions here and you basically just said hey there are unsafe working conditions and that is what it is. That should not be the response of our country to the men and women who need to deliver and who do deliver for america. The response should be and i was hoping response is going to be im going to see if we can get the workers at these unsafe conditions because nobody should be working in 20 degrees. That is in fact what ive been doing and thats a very unfair accusation. You just said it is what it is. I was explaining the status of the condition of the organization when i arrived there and what would been trying to do in the last few years and we recognized that as a facility issue and we will be moving but it is a big place for a lot of people and no money. And we are trying to fix fix it. I hope you will look at it more closely to get a quicker resolution. With that i yield back. The general woman yells back her time. Without objection congressman turner kansas will be way down to the subcommittee for the purpose of questioning witnesses at the days hearing. The distinguished gentleman from kansas is recognized for five minutes. I do have some concerns of the operation side and would appreciate your clarification and insight on a few things. We passed the Postal Service reform act just over a year ago preclude requirement for Postal Regulatory Commission. In consultation the Inspector General to conduct a study of the inefficiencies and processing of flats. Prc reports recently issued and now the ball shifts you to develop and commit a plan to remedy the inefficiencies. We currently considering to address his problems . My engineering staff is stating the recommendations. We most likely will not agree with what it is their study identified. There seems to be some blatant misses in terms of what the assumptions are. We will go through that a get a response. Can you specifically say what you agree or disagree with . I cannot. Basic math relationships are not accurate. Duly from moderation mechanism should be in place to ensure rate increases do not involving lime reductions question please play work on the flat processing issue . What if that is not practical at all. You dont think thats practical . I dont think it will fix anything. The answer is no. I think we need to continue the pricing methodology is in place today, was in place for the last 15 years for 50 70 billion ahead. The part raised the price is 5 quintillion of which 80 of their money has been inflationary at knowing we have today. The discussion about price which is what got us into the situation today is a nonstarter with me. Ive been very, very purposeful and speaking to the manors about what i feel the issue is. Very purposeful speaking with the board and the board recognizes this. Gone on for 10 years and by us subsidizing industry which is where most of these. Not going to do anything for them. For a variety of factors controlled or otherwise is the high cost organization. Is there anything you think should be done to reduce cost we are currently considering . Are you arkansas currently constrained from doing . I went to change a two hour entry time on periodicals so i could aggregate movement of mail. I got stopped by the Postal Regulatory Commission. For the last 10 years they watch the destruction of the organization. And did not do anything. There are plenty of things for i can move a lot faster but the plan has identified specific things regard to our network, deliver, sales and integrating packages. Price is part of the great raising prices on market dominant mail is part of the profits. We had a pricing model for 15 years and we need to move beyond that. She mentioned periodicals since august of 2021 periodical rates have increased more than 32 well above inflation is other costs continue to arise paper, income and transportation the like. By constituents helmick these increases are not sustainable. Periodical volumes have declined 32 since 2018 for there is no other option for deliberate leaving these businesses to cut staff or close their doors but would you agree we must look for solutions other than raising rates . We all look at the solution of the organization was generating a profit. For the last 19 years to date we taperecorded every prearticle we deliver to know what that means question quiz 500 million periodicals. A lot of that is we had defective pricing model. We do have cost. I tell everybody i know we have inefficiencies but thats were trying to drive out. We are driving billions of dollars out we will continue to accelerate that Cost Reduction as we move forward break. To understand the very real issues as housing for these companies that are struggling with rising inflation rising costs of other things . I sensitive to the idea . Sounds like youre saying stop whining had a bad pricing model for 15 years. Theres a little more to it. Im not saying then facing the reality sir. Face the realities of what existed here. What is allowed to exist for 15 years. The consequence out to the organization we are trying to fix right now. Price is part of it had defective pricing model for 15 years. What would you propose is part of the tool little box of fix that . You get new authority. Regularly allowed the prices we charge based on whatever it is they look up. We are using that authority. Most of that comes from inflation we do understand inflationary impact of the last couple years . What is with zeros at organization losing money digging out of a hole . Suck it up and continue to subsidize the industry . Thats not what i was brought here to do. So we should be more mindful of the business very. I am very mindful progress in overtime thank you, mr. Chairman. A gentleman yields back his time practicing with gentlemen in california mr. Garcia is recognized for five minutes. I think mr. Chairman. Thank you for being here and i want to thank all of the women and men of the Postal Service incredible folks the Postal Service should connect all of us but does Incredible Service for so many. Especially folks who are seniors that might be at home or have special needs. The Postal Service is critical we know for these folks especially. We dont unfortunately for Many Americans living in poverty especially those without stable housing, mail and the delivery of males very difficult summit when the Public Benefits for survival for timely distribution. Our information went to continue to improve our service whenever we can. Many republicans that limited timeframe in california recipients like only have 10 days to respond. Not to send mail in a timely manner and sometimes a reason why a lot of folks use snapper food benefit. The delivery of mail is really critical for people cannot afford access to a po box of general Delivery Service is the only way they can ask a central mail benefits, housing vouchers and more. Dish of mail accessibility is especially critical. There are two issues i wanted to bring up to you sir. With our office to help. There are barriers disproportionally her folks were un housed in might be immigrants are folks who may not have direct access to mail. I seen this firsthand the city in california at katerina island. Like other world communities across the country that do not have delivered this committee operates in a po box system is led to resident struggling to access mail in about becomes on u. S. Census forms. Wanted to flag this one issue. Even became a team a great help work with us on these concerns the council there, and the community this is her top issue with mail delivery. Theyre having concerns when the flag that vibrate smiling committee off the coast of california. It is a Beautiful Community they have been asking me to push on this issue five you have commitment on that that would be great. I have my Government Relations people reach out to you very. Thank you. We talk about accessibility for this really critical issue in the city of maywood. Maywood is a Small Community in california. It is the most dense city west of the mississippi. It is a largely immigrant population. Many spanish speakers. But again if you can imagine it most dense city west this a Small Community im discussing. Number one concern whenever i talked to city council or meet in the community that post office as you can see behind me it will get you a photo. Whats missing is a ramp to allow wheelchair access. Whiteman shown to me on multiple occasions are seniors and folks on realtors that cannot access the post office. The building has stood for nearly a century and has remained a date noncompliance of the bill was passed into law. Management 25 years despite outrage from the city of may word to usps programs in conversation with your staff and i present the work. Conversations as to their other post offices that are near maywood none of course in the city, they could use it have a ramp. But thats not an acceptable answer for the folks in this community. These are seniors, folks in wheelchairs, folks have a hard time moving they cannot get up the steps. Physically even seniors and many of cannot get up the steps. This is also a community that is underserved. So i just wanted you to know within the city of maywood this is a certain number one request of me as a federal representative. Can you please get us an ada ramp for the post office . I wanted to know that. If i could have a commitment. Your team essentially the impression we have received is we cant help. We are complying with in the lobby i do not when its been acceptable answer. We will take a look at it. It was a good pitch we will take a look for. Thanks i thought since youd be here and give you the pitch for these folks. I will tell of the be very excited if youre able to help them. Last thing wrote brief i dont have a long time kid with the veterans and post office traditionally have a great relationship with veterans. We have seen a reduction of veterans within Postal Service work. Do you want to maybe note why that is, whats the longstanding commitment to veterans in this country . Historically veterans have been a significant part of our workforce. And it still is a significant part of our workforce but i believe you have over 70000 veterans in the workforce. The economy is changing, society is changing. The number of veterans is changing. The type of work is different. We are trying to find ways to increase the attraction to being a postal worker and it starts with making improvements in the workplace that we are heading down. Being more vibrant in terms of our commercial application growing in business. Being more creative in terms of our services. People want to be associated with a winner. We have had lot of hard times over the last 15 years. There is not been a Pleasant Place to work. We are trying to change that. I know we have already had a consequence make a positive consequence on it. Theres still so much more to do. Will hopefully re attract rights thank you sir are i know im out of time i go back i appreciate your interest. That gently yields back is time for the gentlewoman from South Carolina is recognized for five minutes. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Detroit thank you for being here this afternoon and answering our questions very directly even though some have been very tough. I represent south first Congressional District. The tent fasting growing in the nation. Weve seen explosive growth over the past couple of years. When tourists come to charleston or hilton head island, South Carolina they never want to leave. So they buy houses, they say that which is great for connate but also present certain challenges to Postal Service and delivery. Our view questions i like to ask on behalf of my constituents. Received complaints about mail delivery almost daily from constituents. We sort of feel helpless at this point on being able to get them their packages and everything but my questions are real specific to our demands in our district despite the significant populace and growth the first Congressional District theres been a lack of new post offices for additional postal routes been established to accommodate our growth. I would like to ask you today should the Postal Service adapt to changing demographic circumstances, yes or no . Yes. Okay thank you. A postal worker from the lowcountry thats our nickname for the area represent, called our office recently to say theyre not able to keep new hires on board because the routes are impossible to complete the allotted time. Even if they do complete them it is often long after dark which has become a safety issue. And a safety concern and have increased postal crime and violence which you know is on the rise. I like to ask if you think is appropriate for postal workers at the worker take on those kinds of risks . Yes or no . No. Thank you. My constituents ive heard stories about their medications crystallizing in the mail. Becoming useless being left in warehouses, trucks of the wrong mailbox. Standard Postal Service policy for the elderly not to get their medicine on time and when they finally do get it for it to have gone bad yes or no . Many of my constituents have called and complaining of incurring late fees on bills due to late mail, missing irs refunds, missing payments there is any reimbursement or plan for action for our constituency to have late fees on bills, bills that were missed because mail was delivered late or lost . That is no action for reimbursement. We are trying to improve mail Service Across the nation. About this after repurchase medication due to being delivered late, is nothing able to be delivered on time . Theres no action to reimburse. Okay. The last year we sent a letter to district manager to start the process to fix zip code lines in goose creek, south my hometowns great news zip code for cane bay and our district in my constituents have wanted this for years. Goose creek asked about every time i see you then. To date nothing has happened but u. S. Postal service side of things. I like to know if you guys can get around to helping us so we get mail delivered better, faster, particularly in this area on that front or is it going to take an act of congress . What do we got to do . Zip codes are part of our operational processes. Just cant add them whenever we want without looking at the whole. We always review regrets what is the criteria for getting that done . What criteria do you use in the Postal Service for disturbing determent of zip codes . We actually stopped issuing new zip codes a long time ago. I dont think there is a for. What do we do . This is a whole area thats all really fast from parts of our district its explosive. We cannot keep them from stop building houses and mailboxes. What we do . Ill take a look at it. There is a lot of way to solve for explosive growth in changing zip code. Theres route adjustments, there are facilities. We are now looking at part of our transition is to look at where we are at with going to whole process of being evaluated over route structures. Looking at where all the deliberate units are based. Rolling out new facilities were to the amount moving to assistant. In trying to stabilize the workforce and make everything and everybody happy. We are on that path. I will look at the charleston area and talked about it. Cane bay, cana bay at. [laughter] that will be great. I want to thank you for being with us today but its our responsibility to hold the Postal Service accountable and ensure that we fulfill this mission with him mission see integrity and k. I yield back mr. Chairman professor joshua yields back thats our time. We are almost there. The distinguished gentleman the Ranking Member will be recognized for closing statements judgment would choose to make. Got a couple quick statements. First, representative connolly we all reference at the beginning of this meeting is not here now. He is steel dealing with the matter of the staff persons in his office that were attacked to. He had have three questions for you and for the sake of time i am not going to read them but would ask unanimous consent they be entered into the record. Staff will make sure your staff gets a copy so he might be able to get a response. The other thing is i referenced also earlier at the beginning the letter mr. Kramnik, myself and the Ranking Member wrote you obviously just got. As you go through it i want to call your attention to something that jumped out at me. I goes back to something represent raskin asked. This letters deals primarily with safety of employees. Try to keep letter carriers and delivers safe from the crazies that are part of our society. We reference the increases in the amount of theft of both mail and keys allows persons to access to cluster boxes, blue boxes and other things. But what just caught my attention earlier is the letter references a statement made by the National President of the Police Officers association of the u. S. Postal service. He did this before the subcommittee on september 7 of last year. While there are certain assertions, his conclusion though i found striking he said the Postal Service must effectively utilize all of its resources to curb the plague of mail theft and to stop attacks on postal workers. What i do know quote is that mr. Dejoy is not that anything to rectify the problem. This caught my attention after i. Reporter it because mr. Raskin also asked the question about this association of police that you have oversight over i believe it is 600 or so. Then i heard you respond you did not have Statutory Authority given by this congress to direct and regulate those individuals. I am a little concerned at found its way into our letter to you. I do not know the gentleman who made the statement who is the head of that association. But if you do not have Statutory Authority to do what he says youre not doing it seems to me this statement not disallowed but not taken seriously within this letter. We are trying to get real answers but not trying to throw blame and throw people under the bus. Thank you, if you would not Pay Attention to that one statement that is in this letter. It has nothing to do in my opinion with what we are trying to do. Now that it know you do not have Statutory Authority to do to say when he said you didnt do it does not make much sense of going to correct the record on that. We will obviously look forward to your response to the several things we asked about that you do have authority over printed to thank you for being here. As i said when we began this all started we were all wearing masks. Thereve been several persons on this community that talked about how they shouted at you, cursed that you and almost threw things at you. But you are still here, we are still here and we are thankful some sense of progress has been made it would be fair to say it is a tough, tough job. With theory at little sympathy lot of her regionalism because we are on the ground we hear what we hear from constituents. We are obligated but we have an opportunity like this to bring you before you. But you should know is a chairman said we are looking to Work Together to solve problems. What you inherited was a mess. Several organizations and place part of the u. S. Postal service that were witnesses. They just sit around did not do anything. We will be critical will be have to be critical. The bottom line is we have got to keep making some sense progress. Im one to yield back i may have additional questions later will transfer those in writing particularly as it relates to electric vehicles what we do and how you reconfigure the assets you have on the ground but mr. Chairman thank you very much for the opportunity of roadworks thank you very much. The postmaster general i think was i would describe as professional. I believe the interaction of the subcommittee on our guests were real well reasoned and balance. We will Work Together on this side mr. Postmaster general brew we recognize but i think you have never thought otherwise there is extreme interest in what you do. But we need to work as i have said in together. I think we need to do a better job on this side and i know we will work well with you. I want to acknowledge the judgment one of our former colleagues from indiana congressman who has taken time to be here. Like all of our witnesses and other guests we have here, bear attention to the details of what we are attempting to do to move this country forward. Including the Postal Service is greatly recognized and appreciated prone to think the distinguished gentleman for his time as soon as that bank down the gavel i want to come down and shake your hand and offer our thanks for your service to this great nation for this public to subcommittee hearing what the subcommittee of government operation federal workforce with todays hearing. [background noises] [background noises] [background noises] [background noises] [background noises]. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]