(Washington, D.C.) – Today, U.S. Representatives Emanuel Cleaver, II (D-MO) and Jack Bergman (R-MI) announced a letter to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, rebuking the United States Postal Service (USPS) leadership for lowering their delivery standards for Fiscal Year 2025. The bipartisan letter stressed the need for the unelected and unaccountable DeJoy to address these service issues within his agency, as millions of Americans depend on timely deliveries.
In the letter to the Postmaster General, the lawmakers wrote:
“Instead of directly addressing the issues that caused the agency to miss its targets in FY2024, USPS has now chosen to lower its service standards – concealing its shortcomings, deflecting public criticism, and likely paving the way for further reductions in mail service to our communities. This decision sidesteps accountability and improvement, eroding public trust and setting a troubling precedent for future performance evaluations.”
In recent years, Congressman Cleaver has voiced numerous concerns with the USPS about performance issues. In October 2022, Reps. Cleaver and Sam Graves (R-MO) sent a letter to Postmaster General DeJoy expressing concerns about the agency’s failure to fulfill their congressionally mandated duty to provide six-day mail delivery. In December 2022, the Postal Service responded with complaints about low unemployment rates in the Kansas City region and encouraged residents to apply to work for the USPS, without offering a plan for the agency to meet their mandate.
In March 2023, Reps. Cleaver and Graves called on Postmaster General DeJoy to deliver a plan to address mail delivery delays, fulfill the USPS’s legal obligation to deliver mail 6 days per week, and listen to the concerns of Kansas City residents who had been frustrated with the performance of their local USPS branches. Following that letter, the USPS OIG announced they would conduct an audit of delayed mail and delivery operations in the Northland and the Kansas City area. The audit was completed in August of last year.
In January 2024, Cleaver and Graves led a cohort of fellow lawmakers calling on USPS to halt price increases on stamps, following the agency’s record-breaking fourth rate increase in the last eighteen months. The legislators demanded USPS address the failings of the Delivering for America Plan and turn around performance issues of the USPS in order to legitimize a price hike for consumers.
In March 2024, Congressman Cleaver, along with Reps. Graves and Mark Alford (R-MO), introduced the Pony Up Act to protect consumers by requiring the USPS to pay any late fees incurred on bills due to delayed delivery service.
In April 2024, Rep. Cleaver joined bipartisan calls opposing USPS consolidation and operational changes across the country. The bipartisan group of 20 Members of Congress denounced the U.S. Postal Service’s nationwide consolidation and review announcements that could severely diminish mail service reliability for postal networks nationwide.
In June 2024, Congressman Cleaver introduced the bipartisan Postal Processing Protection Act with Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-WY) to require the USPS to protect mail processing centers in communities throughout the nation by mandating individual studies on the consequences of consolidating or closing any such facilities.
The official letter from Reps. Cleaver and Bergman is available here.
