ASPEN HILL, Md. — The postmaster general put a series of controversial cost-cutting measures at the postal service on hold Tuesday, in the face of protests across the country by Democrats, and skepticism by some Republicans.
The postal service had been in the process of removing 671 high-speed mail sorting machines and thousands of blue collection boxes nationwide, as well as cracking down on overtime and leaving mail behind as postal worker shifts ended, according to postal union leaders.
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Experts said the moves would inevitably slow the delivery and return of election ballots in the midst of a pandemic.
"To avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail, I am suspending these initiatives until after the election is concluded,” Postmaster General Louis Dejoy said in a statement Tuesday.
Rep. Gerry Connolly, (D-Virginia) said the postmaster, "cannot put the genie back in the bottle."
"Sunshine in the form of public pressure has forced Mr. DeJoy to completely reverse himself," Conolly said. "While this is a victory for all voters and every American that relies on the USPS, congressional oversight cannot be interrupted."
Defending one of the country's most popular institutions has now become a big election issue.
Across the country, there were a series of protests organized at the urging of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Dozens of seniors staged a demonstration outside Leisure World in Montgomery County, which has long been one of the region's largest polling places.
Postal union officials said the postal service has already dismantled three of the 16 massive sorting machines at the giant mail processing center in Gaithersburg.
"We want to move the mail," Nannette Corley of the American Postal Workers Union said. "We want to serve the community. We want to save our post office."
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland) addressed a crowd of USPS supporters outside the post office in Aspen Hill.
"Why is the President of the United States trying to destroy the post office for the people of the United States of America?" Raskin asked as the crowd cheered.
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Raskin isn't buying the president's latest comments that the cost-cutting measures were about speeding up the mail, not slowing it down. Raskin is pushing for the $25 billion cash infusion requested by the board of postal governors, and opposed up to now by Trump.
"They are backpedaling like crazy, because the post office is the single most popular institution in the USA," Raskin said. "Don't mess with the post office."
But Rick Geddes, a postal policy expert and scholar with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said the postal service is in deep financial distress, projected to lose nearly $12 billion this fiscal year.
"One of the only things they have left, short of massive layoffs that they're trying to avoid, is cutting every cost they can," Geddes, a professor at Cornell University and author of the book, ‘Saving the Mail: How to Solve the Problems of the U.S. Postal Service,' said.
Geddes said the best solution would be to commercialize the post office, as many European nations have done, and cut guaranteed first-class mail deliveries to perhaps three days a week. Other nations, he said, still require delivery to every home, but reimburse their postal services for the financial losses that come with that mandate.