U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is suspending policies blamed for mail delays until after the November election.
That announcement came Tuesday as Oklahoma’s lone Democrat in Congress, Rep. Kendra Horn, gave a news conference alongside members of the National Association of Letter Carriers on measures needed to save the United States Postal Service. Horn said the postponed changes don’t mean Congress is off the hook.
"We still need to take action to ensure that there are no sudden or last-minute changes between now and the end of the year. We’ve already seen the impact that these sudden changes have had with removal of drop boxes, with removal of the sorting machines from facilities," Horn said.
Horn wants Congress to allocate additional funding to the postal service, ideally in a stimulus bill, and to address the requirement instituted in 2006 for the agency to prepay 75 years of retiree health care costs.
Horn said that law i’s behind $100 billion in purported postal service debt.
"The USPS is required to fund the retirement for people who haven’t even been born yet. This is not something that other federal agencies or any private company has to do. That’s why the postal service now has challenges," Horn said.
Horn said mail delays affected more than 300,000 veterans a day who get prescriptions through the mail.
