Donald Trump is following one of the cardinal rules of business: don’t throw good money after bad.
The Democrats want to give the United States Postal Service $25 billion dollars, even after the post office lost $8.8 billion in 2019, which was double the annual loss of the previous year, The Hill reported. How long before the post office gets its Democratic allies to ask for another $25 billion? A year? Less?
The Postal Service has been in crisis for at least 13 years, running deficits totaling more than $78 billion dollars. And yet, the bloated, unproductive workforce is never cut, work rules from the 1930s are never changed, and the unions keep asking for more.
Trump’s new postal chief, Louis DeJoy, took over as postmaster general in June. The poor guy must have nearly fainted when the saw the massive problems he would be confronting. So he undertook some cost-cutting measures just so the post office could keep its nose above water for a while.
But DeJoy was accused of “sabotaging” the mail delivery because he tried to save some money. The post office is drowning in red ink but America shouldn’t cut anything or anyone, right? Besides, the post office was perfect as far as delivering mail on time before, so the changes must be part of a Trump plot to destroy democracy or something.
Simple mindedness aside, the notion of “sabotage” would be serious — if it were possible or true. DeJoy’s modest reforms aren’t delaying the mail. That’s a spurious claim with no statistics or evidence to back it up. Anecdotes ain’t evidence. This idea that the post office never delivered mail late before DeJoy “sabotaged” the mail service is pure lunacy.
Trump’s obsession with fraudulent ballots shouldn’t mean that mail-in voting shouldn’t go ahead. Democrats want to give the Postal Service unions a little bonus in the stimulus bill of $3.5 billion — on top of the $25 billion they’re asking for. That’s nonsense. The Postal Service is perfectly capable of processing the mail-in ballots in their usual inefficient manner with the money they have now. It’s a bogus argument that they need more money to process the mail faster. Besides, the unions might have something to say about working harder — extra money or not.
So Trump went on Fox News and said that one of the holdups to passing a stimulus bill is the Democrat demand for postal service money.
“They want $25 billion for the post office. Now, they need that money in order to have the post office work so it can take all of these millions and millions of ballots,” Trump said. “Now in the meantime, they aren’t getting there. By the way, those are just two items. But if they don’t get those two items that means you can’t have universal mail-in voting, because they’re not equipped to have it.”
“Now, if we don’t make a deal that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting,” he added. “They just can’t have it. So, you know, sort of a crazy thing.”
To the left-wing media, this is Trump “admitting” he wants to “sabotage” the election. The truth is that there is not going to be “universal mail-in voting,” anyway. More than half the ballots will be cast in person — as they should be in the first place. I don’t share Trump’s fears of massive fraud, but even with more money, the Postal Service would still fail to deliver about 3 percent of legitimate ballots on time. That is unacceptable to everyone but Democrats and the media who say “close” is good enough.
The post office is an anachronistic dinosaur — a bloated, inefficient money pit that refuses to reform and streamline its operations to try to stem the flow of red ink. Let DeJoy try to reform the monstrosity before throwing any more good money after bad.
I had a friend who’s wife work in a post office. One summer her office hired a young female letter carrier. Brand new to job, she was returning to the office after about 4 hours. She got taken aside by the rest of the carriers and told do not come back to the office, go out and work on your tan. She was doing strange routes and finishing by 1oclock. She was delivering mail on unfamiliar routes in half the time as carriers familiar with the routes.
I worked for several airlines and was always amazed at the number of employees at the post office and their ability to not do much of anything.