A U.S. post office in lower Manhattan (Photo by David Lat)
The attacks on the post office by Donald Trump and his army of nouveau authoritarian Republican goons are based on only one thing: voter suppression. Like he always does, Trump said the quiet part out loud the other day, and made yet another public announcement that would have been an administration-ending scandal for anyone else had it been discovered in a secret email: Donald Trump said he is trying to deny funding to the Postal Service in hopes of stymieing its ability to make mail-in voting work during the election this fall.
In their other go-to strategy of “throw everything at the wall and see what sticks,” Trump and his allies have also claimed repeatedly that the Postal Service “is in a financially untenable position,” and that Trump’s postmaster general is only gutting the agency he was tapped to lead in an effort to “rein in expenses.” That is a lie. The current Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is a major Trump donor, is the first postmaster general in nearly two decades who was not a career Postal Service employee, and is trying to ruin the mail not because he gives a damn about expenses, but because Trump thinks keeping people’s votes from counting will help him win the election.
It’s sad. A bought-and-paid-for political hack sits in the office once occupied by Benjamin Franklin, who was appointed as America’s first postmaster general in 1775. And if you know your history, you know that means what we now know and love as the United States Postal Service predates both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.
But when the Founders did finally get around to effectuating our Constitution in 1789, they were sure to make room for what even people centuries ago considered an essential government service. Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution is known as the Postal Clause, and it gives Congress the power “To establish Post Offices and post Roads.”
Note that the Postal Power doesn’t include any caveats like “as long as the Postal Service generates enough revenue to cover its own expenses.” That’s a weird way to think of a government service — any government service. Imagine if we started cutting the military every time we called attention to the fact that it doesn’t generate a profit.
Nonetheless, the Postal Service has been the victim of decades-long attacks pertaining to its fiscal situation. This helps make the current postmaster general’s excuse for his actions sound a bit more plausible. The Postal Service has also been subjected to a lot of weird funding-related requirements by lawmakers over the years, like having to prefund its retiree health benefit payments. That is not required of any other public or private entity, and it actually worsens the current financial situation of the Postal Service.
Still, I’d say the Postal Service is doing a pretty bang-up job on saving taxpayers’ money compared to other federal entities. For fiscal year 2019, the U.S. Postal Service reported operating revenue of $71.1 billion, compared to operating expenses of $79.9 billion. $8.8 billion is a lot of money. But a budget deficit of $8.8 billion doesn’t sound so bad when you consider that U.S. military spending for 2019 was about $718.69 billion, which was not offset by any revenue at all.
The mail is a service that every American is using, has used, or will use at some point in the future. That can’t be said about many government services. Of course, the people mailing things should have to pay for delivery of their things, and yes, those payments should help offset the costs of the Postal Service. But the Postal Service is not a business, and it never was. The Postal Service has been integral to our democracy since before the founding of our democracy. It should not matter whether the post office generates a profit.
The Postal Service has fulfilled many roles since the birth of our nation. This year, hopefully, it will allow millions of us to vote safely without spreading COVID-19. But don’t buy the lies from the Trump administration about cuts and mail shutdowns being the result of a budgetary crisis. If we want a government service funded, all we have to do is fund it. The attacks on the Postal Service are really about voter disenfranchisement, and nothing else.
Jonathan Wolf is a litigation associate at a midsize, full-service Minnesota firm. He also teaches as an adjunct writing professor at Mitchell Hamline School of Law, has written for a wide variety of publications, and makes it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.