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The Political Scene | The New Yorker
Trump vs. the United States Postal Service
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Trump vs. the United States Postal Service
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- [00:00]
A
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- [01:16]
B
This is the political scene, a weekly conversation with New Yorker writers and guests about politics. It's Thursday, April 30th. Hello, I'm Dorothy Wickenden, executive editor of the New Yorker. The U.S. postal Service is a rare thing, a beloved federal agency. 91% of Americans view it favorably compared to Congress, which rates a sorry 22%. Mail carriers go to every household in the United States, and they're the only US Government employees most of us see on a regular basis. They work through hurricanes and blizzards, anthrax attacks and outbreaks of infectious disease to deliver prescriptions, groceries, unemployment checks and an occasional hula hoop or crate of live turkeys. But the Postal Service has been in serious financial trouble for years, and as the coronavirus crisis has worsened, the volume of mail delivery is estimated to have dropped by 30%. Trump has called the Postal Service a joke, falsely claiming that the agency's financial woes stem from not charging enough for delivering packages for e commerce companies like Amazon. In a press conference this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi criticized the president's antagonistic stance toward the usps.
- [02:39]
C
The only way it will be stopped is if the American people understand what, what a loss it is for them. I don't know. People think it's because the president wants to come after Amazon, whatever it is, but I think that it predates that. I think it is privatization because they're anti governance and that's who they are. And that's a legitimate debate to have in our country. And we will have it.
- [03:05]
B
Without a bailout or congressional intervention, the Postal Service could be forced to cease operating by the end of the year. Casey Sepp, a New Yorker staff writer, joins me to discuss the Postal Service's long history and whether the pandemic could change our perceptions of some services provided by the federal government. Casey, welcome to the program.
- [03:27]
D
Thanks so much, Dorothy. It'd be an honor to talk with you about anything, but especially the mail.
- [03:33]
B
So you have an even closer relationship than the rest of us to your neighborhood mail carrier. Could you tell us about your mother?
- [03:41]
D
Sure. The truth is, I come from a postal family. I've got two aunts who work for the post office, and my younger sister's godfather works there, too. But my mother has been a rural letter carrier for 38 years. So she is not a city clerk like some of the folks in New York or any metropolitan area interact with or, you know, a clerk at the window when you go into an office to mail a package. She's one of these folks who, on her route, it's about 50 miles she drives every day, delivering to customers along a rural route.
- [04:10]
B
And where is that?
- [04:12]
D
She has delivered most of her working life right here in Talbot county on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.
- [04:19]
B
Early on in life, we tend to take our parents and their occupations for granted. And I wondered when and how did your view of your mother's job change as you got older?
- [04:31]
D
You know, I always knew what my mother did. And the truth is, you know, I grew up in this rural part of the country, so we were for a long time at the mercy of the male and what came that way. And our grandmother would write to us and we had the telephone, obviously, but I think probably more than a lot of folks. I was enamored with the mail from a young age. And I think before the regulations changed, my mom must have taken me once out on the route with her. And certainly over the years, we would hear about customers who, you know, gave her things or did her favors or inquired about us. And, you know, she has 545 people on the route. It was like a whole other family she went to visit. And so I was always fascinated by them. And then I think as a teenager when I got more interested in transportation and mechanization and frankly, how the government works, it seemed even more incredible to me that my mother was one of 600,000 people who got up every day and did this and was an ambassador for the government and was a conduit for news and essential goods and just the world that came to our door.
- [05:33]
B
And it's worth mentioning, as you do in a piece you wrote this week for new yorker.com, how physically grueling the job is. Could you talk a little bit about that and how that's affected your mother?
- [05:45]
D
Sure. I mean, that is certainly one of the things that, you know, the postal unions are quite strong and one of the things they're always looking out for is the health and welfare of the employees who perform this work. And I think that E commerce is a wonderful thing. But of course, there's a direct transfer of those things onto mail carriers and private delivery folks too. So that, you know, when you order the 50 pound bag of dog food or the hundred pound set of weights, you know, those are of course being delivered over and over again by postal employees. So I mentioned that as something that I. That I only became aware of later in life when I started to look at the condition of my mother's body. But that's not to say my mother doesn't want to deliver those things. Of course she does. But doing it in a hurry and doing it every day has consequences. And it's one of the reasons I think we should be taking care of workers like this and making sure their wages are good and their benefits are generous.
- [06:38]
B
I think it's indisputable that one reason the USPS is threatened with extinction is because of its generous employee benefits.
- [06:46]
D
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, my mother was in her union and I come from a union family. And you know, to be clear, these benefits and these wages are more generous than equivalent jobs in the totally private sector. But, you know, I hesitate to be clear. It's not as if my mother became a millionaire by delivering mail. So to keep it all in perspective, you know, we're talking about vacation time and basic health care and a pension plan. And you know, I think that they are worthwhile. They did move someone like my mother. Mother graduated from high school, but does not have a college degree. And she was able to have a lifelong fulfilling career. And I was really touched. You know, there have been a lot of people like me writing about their Families. And Danny Glover, the actor wrote kind of a similar piece. You know, he's from an African American family. And for his mother and father and for a lot of their friends, the Post office was really the only vector to the middle class. You know, there was not discriminatory hiring. There were guaranteed promotions and raises and steps and things like that. So it has really, for a lot of people, veterans, people of color, just been an equal opportunity employer. But I think you're right to point to that as one of the real reasons it's being targeted. That, you know, if it were just about popularity, as you said, 91% of Americans like this institution. So it's not about the services they provide. I think that there is a general animosity towards the Post Office because it is a union shop and because it is something that is potentially lucrative. And that's why private enterprise would like to take it over.
- [08:21]
B
Private businesses too are struggling with generous employee benefits and many of them have been cut back. And I wonder why. In the days of email, video conferencing and same day private delivery services, why do we still need the usps?
- [08:39]
D
Sure. Well, a couple of things. So first of all, there is same day delivery, but it's exorbitant. And you know, there are private companies that could step into some of this business. Look, we all have used FedEx or, you know, UPS, but their fees are higher. And frankly, some of the ways that they even keep the cost that they have is that they contract with the Postal Service. There are simply rural parts of this country that are not financially lucrative to reach. It's why the Post Office isn't even more profitable than it once was. They guarantee universal delivery. And it doesn't matter how remotely you choose to live. The Post Office will get you your mail or, or sell you a P.O. box for you to use for annual delivery. Those are the reasons that it's a tremendously essential service. And the founders realized this about. It's not as if you couldn't convert some of your business to online or decide that you were willing to ship fewer things at a higher cost. The Post Office means you don't have to make those kinds of decisions. And it means that the moment the CDC has designed coronavirus guidelines, 130 million copies can go door to door. When it comes to absentee ballots, they can be even more secure because you already have a point of contact with every citizen. These are things beyond commerce.
- [09:53]
B
You mentioned a minute ago. The founders and listeners might not be aware of just how far back in American History the Postal Service goes. Could you tell us a little bit about where the US Postal Service came from?
- [10:06]
D
Yeah, I mean, it's really fascinating to me. I knew it was an early institution. I knew it was in the Constitution itself. But what I hadn't realized is, you know, the Post Office was one of the first acts of rebellion. There was the Royal Mail, and it operated in this country. But understandably, you know, one of the ways the colonists felt most restricted and pinched and taxed was through the mail. So it was actually, you know, summer of 1775, second Continental Congress, that they decided they wanted their own independent postal service so they could communicate with one another. And that's when Ben Franklin is named Postmaster General. And it's the start of reorganizing the country independently. And the Post Office is in the Articles of Confederation. And then they actually, you know, they expand its power in the Constitution. So it's a tremendously long history. And again, even in those early days, a tremendously high level of satisfaction.
- [10:58]
B
But way back then, of course, the US was just a collection of 13 colonies. And then the role, the Postal Service changed as the country expanded geographically.
- [11:08]
D
Right. It didn't just follow American settlers into the wilderness where they went. It actually helped to develop it. And you know, that when I mentioned the Constitution tied even more authority to the Postal Service, it actually allowed for the construction of postal roads. So it gave the government a mandate, you know, to secure the delivery of the mail. And that meant that over time, you know, these postal roads, and maybe some listeners have been on the Albany Post Road or the Boston Post Road, and those were the postal roads they ran from Florida to Maine all the way into Canada. And it allowed the government to reach into these places and generate more commerce and more communication and more transportation, some with more success than others. You know, the Pony Express, while famous, was apparently kind of disastrous. But, you know, there's still a mule train delivery service by the post office on one of the Native American reservations in this country. And, you know, there are people who get their mail by float plane or by ferry boat. And so just remarkable the way it tracks our country's history and the way that, you know, the government really does follow citizens where they go to provide them services and to meet their needs.
- [12:17]
E
I'm Katie Drummond. I'm Wired's Global Editorial Director. I'm Michael Colori, Wired's Director of Consumer Tech and Culture.
- [12:23]
B
And I'm Lauren Good. I'm a senior correspondent at Wired.
- [12:27]
D
And our show Uncanny Valley is all.
- [12:29]
B
About the people, power and Influence of Silicon Valley.
- [12:33]
E
At Wired, we're constantly reporting on how technology is changing every aspect of our lives. So each week on the show, we get together to talk about one of the biggest stories in tech, right? So whether we're talking about privacy, AI, social media, or a major tech figure, we will always explain the Silicon Valley forces behind these stories and how they affect you. Make sure you're following Uncanny Valley in your podcast app of choice so you don't miss an episode.
- [13:04]
B
The Postal Service operated profitably until 2006. What went wrong at that point?
- [13:11]
D
So you know, look, the, the Postal Service, right, it was running a profit in 2006. It, you know, it had $900 million in profit and a lame duck session of Congress. And let's be clear, it was a Republican led Congress decided to change some of the mandates around the Postal Service. And one of the things they did was make it harder for the Postal Service to raise the price of its services. Congress actually has oversight over the Post office to such a degree that if they want to raise the price of stamps, it takes congressional approval. So the first thing Congress did was say we're going to set the rate of increase and we're going to tie it to the consumer price index. And we don't care if your jet fuel is more expensive or the fuel for your delivery fleet is more expensive or health care costs or anything else. We're going to limit the rate of increase on your services. But far more detrimental was a kind of poison pill in that mandate which required the Postal Service to start pre funding its retirement accounts for 75 years. And you know, if that sounds crazy to you, Dorothy, it is. No other private or public company has, has such a long pre funding mandate. You know, this is basically paying into the retirements of employees who haven't been born yet.
- [14:19]
B
But I don't even understand the rationale for that.
- [14:22]
D
I think you could think a long time before you came up with anything other than this was an act of sabotage. You know, if we make sure, just like a lot of, a lot of other public goods, if you starve them, you know, if you deprive them of the money they need to flourish, then you point at them and say, well, they're failing. And you know, the long term thinking is we will eventually privatize it.
- [14:43]
B
The Coronavirus emergency spending bill allows the USPS to borrow $10 billion. That sounds like a lot of money. But the airline industry say, which serves far fewer Americans than the Post office, got 50 billion in the bill. What accounts for the Disparity? Is that too just an ideological.
- [15:04]
D
Yeah, I mean, that's an interesting question. So the Postmaster General went and testified before Congress, and she said the Post Office would really need about $89 billion to shore it up for the next few years. And let's be clear to make it ready to handle the national election this fall. Should we all be voting by mail to continue to provide the medications that seniors and vulnerable people need, and that includes all the VA prescriptions. So to ask for 89 billion and to get a $10 billion loan, the kind of band aid Congress is offering. And worse than that, you know, President Trump tried to place additional restrictions on the money. It was supposed to be an unrestricted loan of 10 billion. And, you know, he's out there making demands about some of the collective bargaining rights and raising package rates based on his animosity towards Jeff Bezos and the Amazon Corporation. So, like a lot of things, he's personalized this problem and tried to use it as a way to settle grievances when, you know, I think finally there is starting to be a bipartisan conversation about saving the Postal Service and that some of these Republican members, whatever their ideology about small government and restricting government spending, they realize that the Postal Service is essential and that again, 91% of Americans value this institution, and they value it just as highly, regardless of their party identification. So I hope that that 10 billion is the first, not the last of the funding offers made, and that, frankly, you know, it's disparaging to call it a bailout. I think that the government ought to be investing in the Postal Service.
- [16:42]
B
So the Postal Service does need major reforms, and they need them right away. What are some immediate steps that could be taken?
- [16:50]
D
Yeah, that's a nice point, Dorothy. The truth is there are a lot of things that Congress, you know, regulations that Congress could change and allowances that Congress could make, because there are some members of Congress who over the last few years have been advocating for what may sound like radical ideas, but some of them have already been in existence before in this country, and they are currently functioning well around the world. And probably the most interesting of those is consumer banking. And, you know, this is one of the things that it sounds radical, but actually, from 1911 until 1967, we had postal banking in this country. And at its height in 1947, 4 million Americans had assets banking with the Postal Service. And what folks would like to do is return to those low cost, basic financial services that you would be able to qualify for regardless of your financial standing, because the truth is right now there are millions of Americans who don't have a checking account. And you know, they pay these exorbitant fees to have their checks cashed. And they pay high fees to send money orders, to pay their bills or to give money to family members. And this is one of the needs the Postal Service could meet and could use to become profitable again.
- [17:59]
B
Ups, for instance, does have notary publics, as I discovered for the first time when I had to mail a package the other day, an important package the other day. There's no reason the US Postal Service couldn't do that too. And then what about things, seemingly simple things such as going to five day work weeks? I think we haven't mentioned that. Actually postal workers work six day work weeks right now. And fixing the retiree fund and raising prices on services?
- [18:26]
D
Yeah, I mean, you know, actually the truth is a lot of postal employees, you know, not the same ones, but overall they do delivery seven days a week. And I think what the post office needs is the ability to be nimble because if UPS decides that they have a retail office that's not profitable, they close it. There is not a congressional hearing. And you know, understandably, members of Congress, when they start to hear about offices closing in their district or processing centers where jobs might be lost in their district closing, they bring a great deal of resistance. And it means that the Postal Service is not able, insofar as it has been now mandated to run itself like a business. It's not allowed to. And so, you know, where you might go to five day a week standard mail delivery, you would still be, you would still want to provide package delivery seven days a week, but in order to do that, you would need Congress to give it a little more self determination.
- [19:16]
B
And are some of these reforms being discussed in Congress now?
- [19:20]
D
Yeah, you know, President Trump a few years ago convened a task force to kind of look at some of these. Now I think that the findings of that task force were met with a great deal of skepticism because in fact, they did target the unions and some of the provisions for workers. And I think in an ideal world, you know, there would be a balance of things because you wouldn't just be targeting worker benefits to make it profitable and you wouldn't just be targeting the drivers or the postal clerks. You would be looking at the business overall. So some are more popular than others. And I think that, you know, look again, understandably, members of Congress who have rural districts are a little more upset by the possibility of postal closures than some others. But I think that's why some more of the self determination needs to be in the hand of the Postal Service to make these decisions with regard to their business prospects and not just their political prospects.
- [20:13]
B
We're all thinking differently these days about who are the essential workers. And we see it in cities and towns across the country where they stop at the end of the day and clap hands or howl or do whatever they've decided to do to thank hospital employees and others who are risking their lives every day just going to work, reading your piece and talking to you. I wonder if you and your mother think that the pandemic could have a lasting effect on the perception of government and other workers providing these essential services to the country.
- [20:46]
D
Yeah, I think that's a great question. And so my mom's a mail carrier and my dad for most of his working life was a grocery clerk. And I think that they both loved their customers and felt loved by them. What I actually hope, you know, I think that's true for a lot of people, that we did value nurses and that we did value janitors, you know, maintenance workers. I just think there's a. There's a kind of disconnect between our everyday experiences and gratitude for those people and the way that we compensate them and the way that the government recognizes their work. So, you know, there was never a shortage of gratitude on my mom's mail route for her work. I just wish that it were shared by members of Congress. I think rightfully part of this conversation about our gratitude for service workers has asked, you know, why. Why are we not compensating them accordingly, and why is the recognition not embedded in their wages and then the benefits and protections they get? I'm sure my mother and father and the millions and millions of people who have jobs like the ones that they do welcome clapping. But, you know, my parents are much more grateful for the fact that they had money to educate their children and help send them to college and, you know, healthcare that took care of their family. And I hope that that's the enduring effect, that it leads to systemic change and that the conversations we're having in our households are ones, you know, we have with our elected officials and with, you know, the corporations we deal with or the places where we take our business.
- [22:12]
B
Thank you so much, Casey.
- [22:14]
D
Thanks so much.
- [22:19]
B
Kaci Stepp is a staff writer at the New Yorker and the author of Furious Murder, Fraud and the Last Trial of Harper Lee. This has been the political scene. You can subscribe to this and other New Yorker podcasts by searching for the New Yorker in your podcast app and find more political analysis and commentary on new yorker.com Feel free to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. Our theme music is by Russell Gillespie. This program was produced by Alex Barron and kylie warner for newyorker.com Dorothy I'm Dorothy Wickenden.
- [22:59]
E
What the hell is going on right now and why is it happening like this? At Wired, we're obsessed with getting to the bottom of those questions on a daily basis. And maybe you are too. I'm Katie Drummond, the global Editorial Director of Wired, and I'm hosting our new podcast series, the Big Interview. Each week I'll sit down with some of the most interesting, provocative and influential people who are shaping our right now. Big Interview conversations are fun. I want a shark that that eats the Internet, that turns it all off, unfiltered and unafraid. So in a lot of ways, I try to be an antidote to the unimaginable faucet of reactionary content that you see online. To the best of my ability, every week, week we're going to offer you the ultimate luxury of our times. Meaning and context. True or false? You, Brian Johnson, the man sitting across from me. One day, at some point, as of yet undefined in the future, you will die. False. Tell me more. Listen to the Big Interview right now in the same place you find WIRED's Uncanny Valley podcast. Subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.
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D
From. PRX.