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Sarbanes Urges Colleagues to Protect the U.S. Postal Service from Trump-Led Sabotage [Video]

August 22, 2020

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman John Sarbanes (D-Md.) delivered remarks on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives today, urging his colleagues to support the Delivering for America Act, a bill to reverse the Trump Administration's intentional efforts to slow mail delivery and to provide the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) with urgently needed funding to continue delivering critical goods and services to Americans across the country.

See below for the Congressman's remarks, along with a transcript.

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"I wanted to speak, a little bit, to what the Postmaster General acknowledged – admitted – yesterday. He called it a ‘dip in service.' He finally admitted that after being pressed extensively on it.

"I want to tell you what the ‘dip' looks like in my district. So, in all of 2019, our constituent service folks opened eleven cases to deal with delays and service problems with the mail.

"Eleven cases in 2019.

"So far, this year, one hundred and six [cases].

"Now, I'm not talking about people just calling in and complaining because the mail is late and then they hang up the phone and so forth. This is where they got real concerns about what's happening, and they ask us to open a case.

"One hundred and six this year, compared with eleven last year, and a hundred and three of those in the last four weeks. That's not a dip in service. That's a collapse of service. And it tracks exactly the time that Louis DeJoy has been on the job.

"And here's what's so terrible: When you attack the Postal Service from within, which is what he's doing, it has the effect of trying to separate the postal workers from the public that trusts them. Over 90 percent of Americans have an approval – a favorable opinion – of the Postal Service. We have to restore that bond.

"That's what this legislation does."

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