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DAVE ROSS

Fahrenthold: USPS ‘monetary problems’ will get worse if people stop using mail

Mar 23, 2021, 4:28 PM

usps, mail...

(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Postmaster General Louis Dejoy, who took office under the Trump administration, has been fairly controversial, and is now allegedly planning to deliberately slow down the mail.

“We had a really good story that came out that said his plan is to reduce hours, and slow delivery, and I think raise prices,” explained David Fahrenthold, Washington Post reporter and weekly guest of Seattle’s Morning News. “I think his logic is that this is all necessary to make the Postal Service self sustaining.”

“To me, it sort of seems like he’s campaigning for Joe Biden to fire him, to engineer his firing. I don’t know why, if you were Joe Biden, you’d want to keep a Trump administration appointee, who, whenever he appears in public, seems to call for making his thing worse,” Fahrenthold added.

Fahrenthold explains Republican ‘effort to reduce the number of people who vote’

The U.S. Postal Service, as ³ÉÈËXÕ¾ Radio’s Dave Ross points out, does have a financial problem. But the question is, how do you solve it?

“The problem, though, is that if you, given there is competition for the Postal Service, that if you change it in such a way that people just stop using the mail en masse. And I think a lot of us have had experiences with Christmas cards or packages or whatever the last couple of months, where stuff takes, like, three weeks to get here instead of three days,” Fahrenthold replied. “If that happens, if people stop using the Postal Service, all these monetary problems are going to get a lot worse.”

Dave says he’s surprised saving the post office wouldn’t be a bipartisan effort.

“To me, it’s a bit like Amtrak,” Fahrenthold said. “Some people want to see it as, like it should be run like a business, … it should make money. But then there’s also part of Congress that wants it to run like a public service and subsidize areas.”

“And I think you can’t treat it like a business and also expect it to run like a public service,” he added.

Listen to the full interview with Fahrenthold below:

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News weekday mornings from 5 – 9 a.m. on ³ÉÈËXÕ¾ Radio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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Fahrenthold: USPS ‘monetary problems’ will get worse if people stop using mail