United States Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, informed Congress that he signed an agreement with Elon Musk’s DOGE government reform team to help the financially struggling agency address significant challenges.
USPS, an independent government agency with 635,000 employees, reported a $9.5 billion loss last year.
In a letter to Congress, DeJoy stated that USPS plans to reduce its workforce by 10,000 employees next month through a voluntary early retirement program announced in January, according to Reuters.
Since 2021, the agency has already cut 30,000 jobs. USPS has been exempt from federally mandated employee reductions.
DeJoy stated that the agreement with DOGE and the General Services Administration will help the government reform team “assist us in identifying and achieving further efficiencies… The DOGE team was gracious enough to ask for big problems they can help us with.”
DOGE is actively working across the government to reduce costs by canceling contracts and downsizing agencies.
DeJoy noted several challenges, including the management of retirement assets and the workers’ compensation program by other government agencies, as well as unfunded mandates and burdensome regulatory requirements.
Over the past five years, DeJoy has led a major restructuring of the U.S. Postal Service, reducing projected losses from $160 billion to $80 billion over a decade.
His approach has included workforce reductions and contract cancellations or renegotiations, similar to the tactics used by the DOGE team.
DeJoy stated that the Postal Regulatory Commission “is an unnecessary agency that has inflicted over $50 billion in damage to the Postal Service by administering defective pricing models and decades-old bureaucratic processes.”
The Postal Regulatory Commission rejected DeJoy’s claim, calling it false.
It argued that USPS had mismanaged $100 billion in financial assistance from Congress and the commission, leading to greater losses, reduced efficiency, and deteriorating service, particularly for rural Americans.
