Pelosi calls House lawmakers back to vote on post office legislation
The House previously wasn’t scheduled to return until September.
Democrats also warn that slowed postal delivery is delaying prescription medicines mailed to veterans and Social Security checks for the elderly.
“Alarmingly, across the nation, we see the devastating effects of the president’s campaign to sabotage the election by manipulating the Postal Service to disenfranchise voters,” Pelosi said in a letter to colleagues.
She warned that the “lives, livelihoods and the life of our American democracy are under threat.”
Pelosi wants the chamber to vote on a bill sponsored by House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.) that would require the Postal Service to keep up its current delivery standards until the end of the year.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) also issued a statement calling on Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to bring the Senate back to act on legislation once the House passes it.
“I call on Leader McConnell to bring the Senate back into session to quickly act on the House’s legislation that will undo the extensive damage Mr. DeJoy has done at the Postal Service so that people can get their paychecks, medicines, and other necessities delivered on time, and to ensure our elections will remain completely free and fair,” Schumer said.
Republicans argued that the legislation was not necessary. “House Democrats never miss a manufactured crisis to put partisan politics over people in need,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Michael McAdams said in a statement.
Pressure on Democrats to block Postal Service changes intensified after President Trump said Thursday that he opposed boosting postal funding because he wanted to restrict expanded mail voting. White House officials tried to walk back those claims over the weekend.
“The president of the United States is not going to interfere with anybody casting their votes in a legitimate way whether it’s the post office or anything else,” Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said on CNN’s “State of the Union.
Trump has attacked mail voting since the early days of the pandemic, but he has more recently praised the process in some states where he’s in a tight race with presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Those states include Florida, where Trump voted by mail himself this year, Arizona and North Carolina.
Policy changes implemented by DeJoy include banning postal workers from making extra trips to ensure on-time mail delivery and cracking down on overtime hours. That has caused mail backlogs of up to a week across the country.
The Postal Service has also removed high-speed mail-sorting machines and public collection boxes in numerous states, but officials said this weekend they would halt both practices until after the election.
