“I guess we couldn’t find a government worker who could screw it up this fast. It would take them a while.”
Democratic Congressman Stephen Lynch (D-MA) blasted Postmaster General Louis DeJoy Monday, yelling at him for his destruction of the U.S. Postal Service in just two months since he began working under the Trump regime. Lynch, clearly fired up and angry, slammed DeJoy over delays, saying he has “ended the 240 year history of delivering the mail reliably on time.”
Even after his time was up, Lynch would not stop.
“Will you put the high speed machines back?” Rep. Lynch demanded from DeJoy, referring to the 671 mail sorting machines that have been or are slated to be removed from facilities across the country.
“No I will not!” a defiant and angry DeJoy replied immediately.
“You will not?” Lynch, confronting DeJoy, continued.
“Will not!” DeJoy replied.
“Well there you go,” Lynch concluded.
Here’s what led up to that explosive moment.
“So two weeks ago, after you had been postmaster just for just a few weeks that all changed. In the middle of a pandemic that has killed 170,000 Americans, and on the eve of a national election at a time when the CDC is advising people not to gather, limit outside contact, the Postal Service data removing 671 high speed mail sorting machines across the country. You stop the APWU from sorting the mail and you stop the national letter carriers and mainlanders for working overtime to deliver the mail,” Congressman Lynch declared.
“And for the first time in 240 years in our history of the United States Postal Service, you sent out a letter embarrassingly to, in July, to 46 states that said the post office can’t guarantee that we can deliver the mail in time for the elections in November.”
“And we have reports from across the country, as you acknowledge service has been delayed and the mail is piling up. You have ended a once proud tradition.”
“Now as a member of the oversight committee we are the chief Investigative Committee in the Congress we conduct oversight on every matter that impacts the American people, foreign and domestic. There are members on this committee who have been to Iraq and Afghanistan a couple dozen times they’ve been to Yemen, Somalia Gaza, you name it. They literally go to the ends of the earth to investigate matters that affect the American people, especially when it involves our sons and daughters in uniform.”
“In this moment, it is our postal workers who happen to be our men and women [in] uniforms, they are on the frontlines of this pandemic. Throughout this pandemic they’ve risked their own health and safety to deliver or tried to deliver mail medicines and mail in ballots to every American home and business, six days a week. As a member of this august committee I’m supposed to ask you a question.”
“In my heart. I’m tempted to ask after 240 years of patriotic service delivering the mail. How can one person, screw this up in just a few weeks?”
“Now I understand you bring private sector expertise, I guess we couldn’t find a government worker who could screw it up this fast. It would take them a while. The President is running this post office like a business, like he said, he’s running into the ground, as he has declared bankruptcy a few times on his own businesses. In an effort to apply the facts, the real facts, not the not the alternative facts, based on what you have actually done. One can only reach as a Fact Finder, we can only reach two conclusions. One, either through growth and competence, you have ended the 240 year history of delivering the mail reliably on time, or the second conclusion that we can gather, is that you’re doing this on purpose, and that you’re deliberately dismantling this once proud tradition.”