Key Highlights of PMG Louis DeJoy’s Testimony to a House Panel
Louis DeJoy testified before the House Oversight Committee on Monday, where lawmakers continued to express concern about postal changes that could complicate mail-in voting.
In searing opening remarks, Representative Carolyn B. Maloney, Democrat of New York and the chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee, took aim at Mr. DeJoy, calling the notion that the changes he implemented at the agency would not cause mail delays “incompetence at best.”
Representative Jody Hice, Republican of Georgia, blamed the mail delays on the pandemic, saying “there are thousands of U.S.P.S. workers who are not showing up for work due to Covid-19” adding that “the postmaster general has nothing to do with Covid-19.”
Mr. DeJoy, under questioning from Representative Ayanna Pressley, Democrat of Massachusetts, said that 83 Postal Service employees had died from the coronavirus. He agreed to provide a breakdown of the number of Postal Service employees impacted by the pandemic to Congress by Friday.
Democrats pressed Mr. DeJoy, a logistics executive whose name was not on an initial list of candidates provided to the Postal Service’s board of governors, about how he was selected to run the Postal Service.
As The Times reported on Saturday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was a key player in selecting the board members who hired Mr. DeJoy and in pushing the agenda that he has pursued.
Late last week, David C. Williams, the former vice chairman of the board of governors, who was appointed by Mr. Trump as a Democratic member of the panel, told House Democrats in scathing testimony that Mr. DeJoy was the least qualified candidate the board interviewed for the job, and that Robert M. Duncan, the chairman of the Postal Service board of governors, had suggested him to the panel,
As the hearing wound toward a close, Democrats gave Mr. DeJoy a pop quiz about the agency he leads.
Representative Katie Porter, Democrat of California, asked the postmaster general the price of a first-class stamp.
“Fifty-five cents,” he said correctly. “Just wanted to check,” Ms. Porter replied.
“What about to mail a postcard?” Mr. DeJoy was stumped.
“You don’t know the cost to mail a postcard,” Ms. Porter said. (A post card costs 35 cents to mail.)
“I don’t,” he said, adding, after another question about a different type of mail, “I’ll submit that I know very little about a postage stamp.”
Mr. Duncan, the chairman of the Postal Service’s board of governors who also appeared before the committee, acknowledged that Mr. DeJoy was not included in a list of candidates provided by a search firm.
Mr. Duncan said he raised Mr. DeJoy’s name as a candidate after the search firm, Russell Reynolds Associates, provided the board with an initial list of 53 names that did not include Mr. DeJoy, confirming a report in The New York Times
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It’s true in my plant.
People are taking weeks off without any discernible reason.
The Congress people should be the targets.
Thee Congress screwed us in 2006 and and in 2011 and know they blame the new PMG.
It is far better to blame the employees on the bottom that the authorities than run the Postal Service. Management makes the decisions, not the bargaining unit employees. And as for the employees that are cowards for being concerned about their health the employees know management, and the leaders in power, don’t care about weather they live or die. The employees know our leader would throw them under the train in a minute. The employees have been treated like dirt in the past. Look at the Postal clerk in Oakland, Ca. in 2016 that laid on the floor for twenty minutes before calling EMS. then the Department of Labor turned down the widow’s death benefits. As soon as the NBC station in Oakland told the public, the benefits were paid. So I don’t want a Ratpublican congressman blaming the low life scum for not coming to work! For once place the blame where it lies, the very stable genius our leader.