You’ve Got Mail

These thoughts were written by Sophie, one of our 2020 summer interns. The opinions expressed herein do not reflect those of Civitas other than respect for the value of open dialogue.

People have been saying the Postal Service (USPS) is going out of style for years, probably at least a decade. In the age of instant communication through Facetime, text messages, or social media apps there seems to be no need to write something down and wait three days or more for someone to receive it. Nowadays, the only mail that comes is junk mail—advertisements, political literature, and maybe a bill or two—nothing exciting. 

Yet, for all that the USPS has been declared unimportant, unnecessary, and slowly vanishing, there sure has been a lot of news headlines detailing the Trump Administration’s attempts to destroy it. From refusing to allow COVID stimulus aid to appointing a Trump donor to the position of Postmaster General, the Administration has attempted to destroy the Post Office. 

Given that the USPS is an independent government agency, one would believe that the United States government would be universally in favor of protecting the integrity and function of the office. One might also believe that there would be bipartisan support for the Postal Service given that the USPS delivers mail to anyone with an address—benefiting politicians on both sides of the aisle and those in the middle. 

However, like most things in the United States, even nonpartisan offices like the Postal Service find themselves caught up in a partisan battle that will eventually determine the survival of the entire US postal operation. 

The battle started in 2006 when Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enforcement Act (PAEA). The Act required the Postal Service to prefund medical liability for the next ten years. It also meant that from 2007-2016 USPS would need to set aside, or at least project enough savings, to pay for the medical costs for 75 years into the future. 

When the recession started in 2008, Congress passed a one-year relief measure for the Post Office that offered no flexibility. With the advent of email, new financial regulations, and an economy in collapse, the Post Office garnered a reputation for losing money. In 2009, just like today, Postal Service aid was severely restricted. 

Once that reputation was established, political operatives could then combine the “useless” narrative with the “costing taxpayers money” narrative, presenting a multifaceted negative image of the Post Office and making reform difficult. As competitors like Amazon and UPS moved in, calls for the privatization of the Post Office began to gain strength. 

However, both UPS and Amazon serve in a different capacity than the Post Office. 

The unofficial motto of the USPS is “[n]either snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” Which means, officially, that USPS must deliver each letter or package it receives, even to the furthest and most isolated corners of the United States. 

Shipping giants like Amazon have no such obligations and, in fact, often rely on the USPS to deliver packages to rural and remote areas of the United States. If Amazon does deliver, that package will cost more due to the shipping costs. The USPS has a flat rate for packages, which means no matter where that package is going, the cost is the same, making it a cheaper alternative to Amazon and UPS. 

The Trump administration wants to change that, demanding that in order to receive Corona Virus aid the USPS must increase their shipping prices to 400%. The dramatic price increases would raise Postal Service rates above UPS and FedEx, thus destroying the competitive edge it possesses with its current prices. 

Disputes between the Trump Administration worsened when President Trump appointed Louie DeJoy to the position of Postmaster General. 

DeJoy, a well-known Trump donor, immediately began to reform the Post Office’s internal organization. On July 10^th, an internal memo revealed that DeJoy was ordering Postal workers to leave mail behind in order to not delay their routes. 

The memo intends to stop the use of overtime by Postal Workers as they attempt to deliver all letters and packages for the day. DeJoy sees overtime pay as one way to stop the flow of cash from the USPS and begin to halt the financial woes of the agency. 

Others, including mail carriers, see the new protocols as a way to undermine the public’s trust in the agency. By leaving mail behind one day, the next day starts with a deficit, preventing mail from being delivered to people and businesses who rely on timely delivery of the mail. As the public’s trust in the mail system deteriorates, they will turn to other alternatives, further eroding the necessity of the Postal Service. 

This, perhaps unintentional, undermining of the public’s trust comes months before the November election, which will be held during a pandemic and thus will likely see a record number of absentee ballots. Delays in mail delivery will lead to delays in people receiving their absentee ballots and election centers receiving those returned ballots. 

In an election where every vote will count and where most Americans will have serious questions about the safety of voting in person while a pandemic rages, absentee ballots provide a safe alternative to in person voting. But, Americans will trust absentee ballots only if they trust the integrity of the Postal Service. Integrity being undermined by forced delays. 

The United States Postal Service is important for all the reasons listed above: delivery of absentee ballots, standard shipping fees, timely delivery to the most remote parts of America. Mail carriers are essential workers; at the height of the US lockdown postal workers were the ones connecting millions of Americans to vital deliveries. 

Once trending towards obsolete, the USPS has suddenly revived; it is another method of connecting people. Letters, once a lost “art form,” suddenly are experiencing a renaissance as people get creative with communication. How do you reach a grandparent in a memory care unit that does not own a cell phone or laptop? 

People are breaking up the monotony of days spent in quarantine by sending letters, surprising the recipient. As news of the Post Office financial crisis broke, I watched at least three people I knew post stories about wanting to write letters—both to connect to others and to save the Post Office. 

Because the thing is, as much as the Trump Administration tries to wage war on the Post Office, as much as it appears to be a government organization with a partisan bent, the USPS is about connecting people. And that is not a political agenda. That really isn’t even an agenda in the traditional sense of the word. 

For most Americans, their mail carrier has been the same for as long as they can remember. You probably know the face of your carrier, if not their name. Every day except Sunday, those mail carriers take letters, bills, political advertisements, other advertisements, local newspapers, and deliver them around the world—connecting the local and the global. For the most part, they connect places like California to St. Louis, or St. Louis to Boston in three days. 

So, in the middle of a political war over a nonpolitical office, we can take political actions by calling or writing our representatives and voicing our displeasure. 

But we can also lean in to the nonpolitical message of the Post Office. We can write letters to friends and family. We can set up a book exchange or send care packages. We can connect in a new way to people we are used to seeing on Facetime and Zoom. 

I am a firm believer that every form of communication leads to different conversation topics. Maybe exchanging letters will lead to discussions that seemed impossible over text or Facetime or on a phone call. Whatever you write, the United States Postal Service will deliver—across all party, state, and ethnic lines.