By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: December 30, 2024 ~

For the first time in decades of sending holiday gifts to family members through the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), the majority of the packages we sent did not arrive by Christmas Day, despite the fact that we mailed early. One package we sent to Minnesota from the east coast overshot its destination by 1,825 miles and went to California. It then had to travel all the way back. Other packages did not show up in the USPS tracking system for days, until we filed an inquiry with the U.S. Postal Service.

One package that had to travel just four states away took 17 days. According to NASA, it takes approximately three days to travel 238,855 miles to the moon. (See thread posted below for how others describe the “wild journeys” their own USPS packages took.)

Louis DeJoy, the Postmaster General, calls this insanity going on at the U.S. Postal Service his “Delivering for America” plan. DeJoy was a large donor to Donald Trump’s first run for President and was put on the U.S. Postal Services Board of Governors by Trump in 2020.

DeJoy has come under withering criticism for the deterioration of USPS delivery times, despite six rate hikes since he took the helm of the USPS. The criticism has come from both Republican members of Congress as well as Democrats.

At a House Oversight Committee hearing on December 10, DeJoy was blasted by Republican Congressman Rich McCormick of Georgia for giving himself a performance grade of A. In response, DeJoy covered his ears like a child — in the midst of a Congressional hearing. The video of the interaction has gone viral.

During the hearing, Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL) held up a chart showing that DeJoy’s compensation for 2024 was $561,051, while there had been six rate increases during DeJoy’s tenure.

At the same hearing, Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) had this to say:

“…249 years later, the Postal Service is still an essential institution for Americans. Its mission is set forth in the Constitution and laid out more specifically in federal code, which charges the Postal Service with: ‘provid[ing] prompt, reliable, and efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render postal services to all communities.’

“…The Postal Service can reach every address in America — 167 million residences, businesses, and P.O. Boxes. Its value is essential to the economy and society — especially to people who live in the most hard-to-reach rural places. Efficiency, reliability, and stability of the Postal Service are critical to meeting the needs of the public and required for ensuring the long-term survival and adaptability of the Post Office.

“The Postal Service has been operating in an unsustainable manner for a long time. When President Trump named Postmaster DeJoy in 2020, the Postal Service was then in need of reform. In response, Postmaster DeJoy launched the ten-year ‘Delivering for America’ plan. He has stated repeatedly that the Postal Service ‘must operate in many ways like a private business.’

“Of course, some private businesses succeed and others go bankrupt.

“Congress passed the bipartisan Postal Service Reform Act in 2022. This helped the Postal Service avoid imminent financial collapse and gave Postmaster DeJoy runway to implement his plan for success. The law helped the Postal Service progress toward graduating from the GAO’s [Government Accountability Office’s] High Risk List, which ranks government operations most vulnerable to waste, fraud, and abuse. And getting off that list is indeed hard to accomplish.

“Despite all these bipartisan efforts, it seems that Postmaster DeJoy has failed to use all this discretion and resources effectively. His changes to the delivery network have resulted in a disastrous decline in on-time delivery in many regions of the country. And we members of Congress hear about it all the time from our constituents: the lost paychecks; bills that go unpaid because they were never delivered; business chaos; the personal disruptions.

“Bipartisan concerns now about DeJoy’s planned changes prompted a delay in the activation of mail processing and delivery hubs through the end of the election and holiday season.

“The Postmaster General anticipated these delays would be temporary and all in service of getting the Postal Service to break-even financially. Three years into his plan, however, the financial condition of the Postal Service is astoundingly bad and much worse than all of his initial projections. Postmaster DeJoy projected in his original Delivering for America plan that the Postal Service would reach break-even by 2023 or 2024. Instead, the Postal Service’s net loss of $950 million from operations in fiscal year 2022 increased to a whopping $9.5 billion net loss in fiscal year 2024. That’s a 900-percent increase in the Postal Service’s losses in a two-year time span.

“Postmaster DeJoy’s Delivering for America plan also changed delivery standards for First-Class Mail from 2-3 days to 3-5 days.  Mr. DeJoy claimed that the new standards would make it possible for the Postal Service to reach its 95% on-time mail delivery goals nationwide. Yet today, not a single one of the 50 Postal Service Districts in the United States is meeting the Postal Service’s self-designed 95% service standard.

“Meanwhile, the Postal Service increased prices for mail and packages in July. Another price increase for packages will go into effect, incredibly, in January of next year.

“In other words, under Mr. DeJoy’s leadership, Americans are paying higher prices for worse service…

“In the last month, the Postal Service announced its intention to lower service performance targets for fiscal year 2025 by as much as 15 percent among certain First-Class Mail products — the lowest performance targets ever, excluding the COVID-19 period.

“Mr. DeJoy’s leadership of the Postal Service is an alarming example of what we may see coming in the next term — sticking to the MAGA playbook of treating essential government functions with cavalier recklessness and ignoring the differences between a private sector company and a public good.”

Below are comments posted online, describing the wild journeys of packages under DeJoy’s “Delivering for America” plan.