▶ 0:13:52Chair Paul: The committee will anyway come to order. The postal service is once again telling congress that it's out of money, running out of money. Once again the answer seems to be send the bill to the taxpayer, give us more money. Every private business in america lives under a discipline the postal service has escaped. When demand falls and business makes hard choices, cuts costs, uses contractors when they can do the job for less, and when something fails it stops doing it.
▶ 0:14:22Chair Paul: A company that refuses to adjust does not double its line of credit from the treasury. It goes out of business. The postal service plays by different rules. When volume falls, it does not cut head count. It adds. We've added over 120,000 employees. It's the opposite of what you do. When a private partner can do the work for less, you pull the work inhouse. Instead you've been pulling the work inhouse at a higher cost.
▶ 0:14:51Chair Paul: When a capital project fails, the post office keeps writing checks. When the bill comes due, the post office doesn't answer. It hasn't answered. It comes to congress asking for higher credit limit and calls it reform. That's the heart of the problem. The post office has been protected from the hard choices that would stop the bleeding. The bleeding never stops. Look at the record.
▶ 0:15:16Chair Paul: We were told that the 2022 reform law, which shifted $107 billion away from the post office, would pull the postal service out of the hole. We were told that the delivering for america plan would restore solvency. We were told this time it would be different. It was not.
▶ 0:15:37Chair Paul: Since those promises, the post office has lost another $126 million and spending money it does not have on infrastructure it may not need. The postal service has lost more than $117 billion, $9 billion in the last year. Before anyone calls these losses uncontrollable, its own numbers say otherwise. It has roughly $18 billion in controllable losses since 2007, $3 billion just last year. This is not a rough patch.
▶ 0:16:09Chair Paul: That is a broken business model. The post office service has already maxed out all $15 billion it can borrow from the treasury. The post master general warns it can rush out of cash as soon as september if it continues to meet all statutory obligations. So the question is not whether the post office needs more money. The question is whether congress will keep rewarding failure without requiring change. This is a business built for a country that no longer exists. And it refuses to adjust to the one who does.
▶ 0:16:39Chair Paul: First-class mail is down 34% since 2014. Over the same period, the post office grew its workforce by 9%. That makes no sense. Volume down by a third. Head count up. No private business would do that. Labor is about 80% of the postal service cost. At u.p.s. Is closer to 60%. The difference is not the union. The difference is whether management will adjust to reality.
▶ 0:17:08Chair Paul: Instead of adjusting, it made things worse. Since 2020, even as revenue fell, the postal service converted about 285,000 workers into career positions, raising their pay and locking in decades of pension and obligations it has no plan to fund. When a private company's volume falls, it reduces labor costs. When the postal service volume fell, it added employees and made them more expensive. This is not reform. This is the opposite of reform.
▶ 0:17:39Chair Paul: The new postmaster general did not make all of these decisions, but he controls whether they continue. The fleet electrification, the multibillion dollar redesign, the capital project without a clear return, these are not unavoidable costs. They're expensive choices, and congress deserves to know whether new leadership will continue them. At the very least, the postmaster general should immediately implement a hiring flees to get labor costs under control.
▶ 0:18:08Chair Paul: There are estimates that $1.8 billion could be saved in the first year with a hiring freeze. We've had a year, I haven't seen anything, any action in this direction. And while it runs up the costs, the postal service will still price its core product below a delivery cost. A stamp is 78 cents heading to 82. Still among the cheapest in the developing world. With its dominant products priced below cost, it's no longer the postal service can't break even. That is not a business plan.
▶ 0:18:39Chair Paul: It is a hidden tax. Before congress considers another dollar of relief, or more borrowing authority, the postal service should show the committee five things. A real plan to bring labor costs under control. Proof that private partners will be used when they cost less. A commitment to stop capital spending that shows no return. A willingness to consolidate facilities that no longer make sense. And proof the service mandate can be met without permanent losses.
▶ 0:19:07Chair Paul: And if it cannot, an honest debate about the mandate itself. Anything less is not reform. It is a slower, more expensive way to fail. And as always, the bill will be sent to the american people. Senator peters.
▶ 0:19:23Sen. Peters: Thank you, Mr. chairman. Thank you for meeting today. It's an important hearing. For more than 250 years, the united states postal service has helped bind our country together. It's connected families. It supports small businesses. It ensures that americans nationwide can receive the essential mail and goods, no matter where they live. The postal service is the only carrier that delivers to every single address in america.
▶ 0:19:54Sen. Peters: That's a feat that for profit competitors don't even try to meet. For communities across the country, particularly harder to reach rural communities, the postal service and its workers provide an essential public service each and every day. In 2022, I was proud to lead and pass the bipartisan postal service reform act, which increased transparency around postal delivery performance and retire healthcare prefunding requirements that integrated postal service retirees'
▶ 0:20:26Sen. Peters: Healthcare into medicaid and codified six-day delivery service. However, it's clear the postal service continues to face significant challenges. The delivering for america plan has not worked. Costs are up. Service is down. And customers are paying the price. The plan has not yielded the financial results needed to stabilize the postal service's bottom line.
▶ 0:20:51Sen. Peters: Over the past five fiscal years, the postal service has posted $9.7 billion in controllable losses. Earlier this year, postmaster general steiner testified in the house that the postal service could run out of cash as soon as this year. Since then, the postal regulatory commission gave the postal service flexibility on how it spends revenue from its additional rate authority.
▶ 0:21:19Sen. Peters: Providing the postal service with an additional $2.4 billion this year. The postal service has also temporarily suspended its normal contributions to the employee retirement plans to preserve cash.
▶ 0:21:33Sen. Peters: While the postal service has not provided a formal estimate of exactly when it will exhaust its available funds, it's clear that congress and the postal service must take action to ensure americans continue receiving mail reliably and affordably for the next 250 years.
▶ 0:21:52Sen. Peters: The postal service has shared some proposals with congress that would help put it on stronger financial footing, including investing its pension funds, revising its calculation for its civil service retirement system obligation, as well as raising the borrowing limit. The post master general is also now asking congress to consider reviving an appropriation for the postal service.
▶ 0:22:18Sen. Peters: These proposals certainly deserve serious review, but any reform must come with real transparency, real accountability, and clear service improvement plans. The postal service must also do a better job of ensuring every employee returns home safely at the end of each day. Last year, nicholas acker was tragically killed in an accident at a processing facility in allen park, michigan. That facility was cited by osha on its safety standard compliance.
▶ 0:22:48Sen. Peters: At my urging, the office of inspector general has launched a nationwide facility safety audit. I expect the postal service to fully cooperate with the audit and double down on its efforts to protect all of its employees when they're on the job. And finally, we can't discuss the future of the postal service without addressing the recently published proposed rule on voting by mail that would enable president trump to hijack the postal service for his own political gain.
▶ 0:23:18Sen. Peters: The postal service has a proud tradition dating all the way back to the civil war of successfully delivering absentee ballots. In 2024, they secured delivered almost 100 million ballots. Last year the postal service reaffirmed that its job is simply to transmit the mail and explicitly said they did not administer elections.
▶ 0:23:42Sen. Peters: The president's march executive order directs the postal service to create "new mail-in absentee participation lists," which they will use to verify which voters are eligible to receive and cast ballots through the mail. This would give the postal service unprecedented authority over american elections and is an unconstitutional subversion of the postal service's duty.
▶ 0:24:08Sen. Peters: I'm disappointed that the postal service shows to give in to the president's illegal demands by issuing a proposed regulation that risks disenfranchising millions of eligible american voters nationwide. The board of governors did not even vote on these approved changes.
▶ 0:24:26Sen. Peters: Under the proposed rules, states must submit each absentee voter to a new national database controlled by the postal service and comply with new federal ballot mail-in requirements, or they will be prohibited from using the mail-in voting in their elections. The postal service will also conduct undefined ballot verification processes to ensure states meet these new federally imposed standards.
▶ 0:24:54Sen. Peters: Ultimately the federal government will serve as the final arbiter as to who can actually vote by mail. Yesterday I led the entire democratic caucus to once again insist that the postal service abandon its effort, uphold the law, and return to its core functions. The postal service has one mission, to deliver the mail, no matter who sends it, no matter where it's going. Mr.
▶ 0:25:19Sen. Peters: Steiner, I urge you to abandon these efforts and return the postal service to its constitutional role of simply delivering the mail. Not acting as a partisan tool for the president. And lastly, I would like to reiterate that the postal service must be transparent and responsive to this committee so we can work collaboratively on the many issues that we face.
▶ 0:25:40Sen. Peters: I hope that today's hearing will be productive conversation about how we can work together to improve the financial position of the postal service and protect its ability to deliver for each and every american.
▶ 0:25:58Chair Paul: It is the practice of this committee to swear in witnesses. Will you please rise and raise your right hand? Do you swear that the testimony you will give before this committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you god? Thank you. You may be seated. David steiner is the 76th postmaster general of the united states and chief executive officer of the postal service. He was appointed by the organization's board of governors and began his continue you're on july 15, 2025.
▶ 0:26:28Chair Paul: In his role as postmaster general, steiner also serves as a member of the board of governors. Steiner is a former c.e.o. Of waste management, a $24.4 billion waste and environmental services company operating throughout north america with nearly 50,000 employees. He was c.e.o. From 2004 to 2016. Mr. steiner, you are recognized for your opening statement.
▶ 0:26:51Mr. Steiner: Thank you so much. Good morning, chairman paul, ranking member peters, and senators of the committee. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss the future of the postal service, a have not rated institution that has driven the growth of these united states for over 250 years. Longer than the country itself. The title of this hearing is apt. The postal service has a broken business model. And we welcome the committee's focus on fixing it.
▶ 0:27:23Mr. Steiner: Levers available to private sector enterprises and to government agencies are unavailable to the postal service. So, for example, first we're mandated by law to deliver to every address. More than 170 million of them, six days a week. And there are over a million new stops added every year. This leads to 84% of city delivery and 52% of rural delivery routes being financially under water.
▶ 0:27:51Mr. Steiner: Moreover, 58%, or 18,000 of our post offices are losing money, occurring over $2.5 billion in operating costs. In a normal business model, if 70% of routes are losing money, you would adjust the routes. In a normal business model, if 60% of the stores you had were losing money, you'd close them. We're not allowed to do either. That is a broken business model.
▶ 0:28:21Mr. Steiner: Second, we're not allowed to unilaterally raise prices, and we're required by law to give billions of dollars in discounts to many mailers. Third, we can only invest our retirement assets in U.S. treasuries. If we were able to invest conservatively in other assets, we could have had nearly $1 trillion in additional retirement assets. And our retirement plans would be well overfunded rather than underfunded.
▶ 0:28:51Mr. Steiner: Fourth, we pay an unfair allocation of benefits for retirees that were with the postal service department before it became the independent postal service. That costs us about $3.5 billion a year. Fifth, we cannot borrow more than $15 billion due to a statutory limit that was established decades ago that has not been adjusted for earnings or for inflation.
▶ 0:29:16Mr. Steiner: Sixth, we're not allowed to manage our workers' compensation claims, costing us anywhere from $400 million to $800 million a year. Now, despite all of these operational and accounting restraints, we're taking steps to fight our way back. That includes reducing transportation costs by $2 billion. We also reduced work hours by 56 million hours, equivalent to $3 billion, and reduced our overall head count by 28,000.
▶ 0:29:47Mr. Steiner: We've also made dramatic progress in improving our service scores, recently hitting on-time delivery numbers not seen in at least the last five years. This is significant progress, but it's not enough. And we will continue to drive costs and drive service. So to me, the choice for congress is clear.
▶ 0:30:12Mr. Steiner: Either remove the mandate that create the unsustainable business model or compensate the postal service for money-losing mandates. I will note that reimbursing the post office service for money-losing mandate is not a novel idea. In 1971, congress foresaw that they would be asking the postal service to do things that were guaranteed to lose money. In return, congress decided to pay the postal service $460 million a year for those public service mandates.
▶ 0:30:43Mr. Steiner: However, this public service reimbursement has not been appropriated since the 1980's. Our preferred proposal is that congress update this public service reimbursement to reflect the true current costs of those mandates and allocate us those funds. However, we can also achieve profitability if we remove the money-losing mandate. But doing so doesn't just affect the postal service, but the entire ecosystem around it.
▶ 0:31:13Mr. Steiner: That ecosystem supports $2 trillion in revenue and eight million jobs. If the postal service reduces service and raises prices, that ecosystem suffers. Jobs are lost, and the overall economy suffers. So in closing, I'm here to tell america that we can do anything they desire, but we can't afford to do everything they desire without more help.
▶ 0:31:38Mr. Steiner: The postal service has been a part of the growth of america, something like steam ships, railroads, aviation, and technology. Subbassessizing the postal service has been a spectacular investment for the united states. We believe the economic engine and that investment is worth saving. And we look forward to discussing with you how to best do so. Thank you, Mr. chairman, and I'll be glad to take some questions.
▶ 0:32:03Chair Paul: Thank you for your testimony. We'll now proceed to questions. There are things you can control and things you can't control. And the mandates, I frankly removed the mandates and treat it like a business. I'd remove them completely. Even some compromises. Go from six days to five days, you save. You go to four days, you save $3 billion. That's 2/3 of your annual debt just by going to four days. You can let people pay if they want it six days.
▶ 0:32:32Chair Paul: They pay an extra $30 a month or $50 a month to get it. What you'd find, almost nobody would pay. They'd be used to getting it in four days. But there are things you can control, hiring freeze. Hiring freeze, we see estimates as much as $1.8 billion a year and cumulative costs going up higher. Why no hiring freeze?
▶ 0:32:54Mr. Steiner: We actually did substitute a hiring freeze probably about 40 days ago. Put out a memo not only with the hiring freeze, but a spending freeze.
▶ 0:33:04Chair Paul: How does it work to have the postal rates change? The commission does it. Do you ask them to do things? What is the communication between the board of governors and the p.r.c.? Are they completely separate? Highway do rates go up?
▶ 0:33:20Mr. Steiner: Yeah, our rates are capped right now. Our rates are capped by an inflation factor, and then a number of stocks.
▶ 0:33:32Chair Paul: Do you submit something to them saying we're losing money, we have to go? Do you submit that?
▶ 0:33:37Mr. Steiner: Yeah, recently, so it limits us as to what type of price increases we can get. We recently filed a petition, and they have undertaken a five-year review. We recently filed a petition that said allow us to raise prices to meet this gap that we have. That petition is under consideration right now. I would hope that the p.r.c. Would give us full consideration. You know, the truth is, Mr.
▶ 0:34:05Mr. Steiner: Chairman, that in my opinion, the p.r.c. Has not put the financial sustainability of the post office first, and they will tell you they have a november factors they have to balance. I completely agree with that. But at a time when we are failing, I think they should give more credence to allowing us to do the things that we need to do to become profitable.
▶ 0:34:37Mr. Steiner: They have prevented us from that.
▶ 0:34:39Chair Paul: If some of the numbers were accurate, you would have gone a long way to reducing $9 billion, saving $2 billion in transportation, saving $3 billion in hours. That goes along with hiring freeze. That would be half of the deficit for the year. I don't believe next year's deficit is going to be half of nine.
▶ 0:34:55Mr. Steiner: Look, I've been associated with a number of businesses, ran them for a long period of time. The problem that you've got in any business is that you've got inflation in your wage base. You have inflation in your supplier base. You have a lot of different innations. So what you try to do is to get enough productivity to offset that inflation. This year, we will offset all the .2% of our costs increases.
▶ 0:35:24Mr. Steiner: But the problem is, in order to make money, any businessperson, go to any business, they will tell you, get productivity to offset your inflation, your cost base, and then price and volume can drop straight to the bottom line and you become profitable.
▶ 0:35:38Chair Paul: I want to be clear, there is a hiring freeze at the post office?
▶ 0:35:41Mr. Steiner: There is.
▶ 0:35:43Chair Paul: Raising the price from 78 cents to 95 generates about $1.6 billion. Hiring freeze about $1.8 billion in the first year, goes up over time. $3 billion for each day reduced. I think hiring freeze could have come earlier, but at least you will start saving some from 40 days ago. There are some people reporting that this really isn't a full hiring freeze. I would like details on exactly what the hiring freeze means to you to make sure it means the same thing to us.
▶ 0:36:14Chair Paul: I think that when you and I talked, and when we talked with your staff coming into this, what we really wanted was you to prepare for us, this is where we spend or money, this is where we could reduce, this I can do on my own, and this I can do with congress' help. That's what I would do if I were in charge. I would say instead of complaining about the mandate, tell us specifically. It looks like each day it's $3 billion. You know, congress needs to address that.
▶ 0:36:42Chair Paul: Part of this is congress' fault, because they have unrealistic mandates that make it hard for you. But the previous postmaster expanded the post office. He made the post office bigger. The only thing you really can control is you can outsource, not insource. It's not rocket science. Contractors cost less than the government employees. 80% of your cost is labor. Reducing labor is the only thing you can do. And contractors do it better.
▶ 0:37:09Chair Paul: I don't care if you outer source 98% of it, have no post office, and you're a shell for a contracting, because it's the only thing you can do. Because nothing the post office does is efficient or makes money. So what I would like is for you to send us a more detailed, this is the money that comes in, this is what we would do, this is what happens if the rate goes up. We have sent a letter to the postal commission.
▶ 0:37:36Chair Paul: I really think that we ought to consider combining and just having one, just have a board of governors, no postal rate commission, just have one commission. The people that run it should be setting the prices. And there can be a veto power by congress. They didn't want to do it. The problem is when you vote on prices, nobody wants higher prices, so everybody wants to please the public, so everybody would always vote for lower prices. But then that's why, part of the reason why we're here.
▶ 0:38:02Chair Paul: I hope you will at least pledge to us that you'll send me a more detailed analysis of what you can and can't do, because the gist of what I got today is we need more money. That, to me, is defeatism and not something I'm interested in doing, just loaning you more money when you lose $9 billion a year. It's not just you, it's the mandates, but it's also the system. The hiring freeze, I would have done that day one. I still hear reports it's not a complete hiring freeze.
▶ 0:38:30Chair Paul: Will you pledge to send us more information on what exactly we need to do to make the post office whole?
▶ 0:38:35Mr. Steiner: Absolutely. Glad to do it. And you know, senator, when I took this job, I took it and had the very narrow focus of how do we make the postal service profitable? As I've gone through this job, I recognize that you can't look at the postal service in isolation. You have to look at the postal service in the context of this $2 trillion industry. It's virtually 100% dependent upon the postal service.
▶ 0:39:03Mr. Steiner: And so what I'm trying to figure out, and I think what the discussion should be, is how do we do what is best for the american people and what's best for the american treasury? How do we get the most net dollars into the treasury?
▶ 0:39:20Mr. Steiner: I wouldn't have told you this even three months ago, but I would tell you that today I think it's worth discussing whether having us act as an economic engine, a development company, if you will, this $2 trillion industry that surrounds us, if that wouldn't generate more net dollars, generate more net jobs, generate more net service for the american public than reducing data service and reducing the post office.
▶ 0:39:50Mr. Steiner: Now again, I'll do it either way. We can do it either way, but I think that's the discussion we need to have.
▶ 0:39:55Chair Paul: You could argue the egyptians building the pyramids created trillions of dollars in jobs. I think it's a false argument. The money could be spent somewhere else. We can build pyramid and the post office bigger and call it for every dollar, we create another dollar. What you're ignoring is every dollar you put in the government, that would have been spent much more effectively in the private marketplace. Senator peters.
▶ 0:40:20Sen. Peters: Postmaster general steiner, the postal service has proposed the vote by mail rule published on june 2 at the direction of the president. As I mentioned in my opening comments, I believe that should concern every american. This rule marks certainly an alarming departure from the postal service's long-standing tradition of neutrally delivering all types of mail.
▶ 0:40:45Sen. Peters: You get a piece of mail with an address on it, make sure it gets delivered to that address in a timely fashion. You don't ask any other questions. What this rule will do is turn the postal service, however, into a ballot-verification agency that would control basically a master database of every american absentee voter. It would also give the postal service new power to determine whose ballots get delivered.
▶ 0:41:14Sen. Peters: I think the constitution is clear. Elections are to be administered by the states, not the federal government. We have a tradition of our local communities and states ad measuring these elections. Once again, not the federal government. My question for you is, under what legal authority can the postal service regulate who and how people can vote by mail?
▶ 0:41:37Mr. Steiner: Yeah, as you know, our regulations are proposed, not final regulations. As to the authority, I used to be a lawyer, but I was a business lawyer, not a constitutional lawyer. So I would have to defer that to the courts to understand the authority.
▶ 0:41:56Sen. Peters: I think it's clear, there's nowhere in the constitution, there's no federal law that the postal service is authorized to create these types of voter databases. Ballot verification systems, or mandatory standards. It just simply doesn't exist. Hard to interpret a law when it doesn't exist there, which is what we have. Just because president trump wants to do this does not make it law, doesn't make it right, doesn't make it constitutional.
▶ 0:42:25Sen. Peters: There's certainly a massive difference between general mail requirements and regulating elections. Routine changes to the postal network can have a small impact on election mail, but this effort is a power grab to swap constitutionally mandated state control for what the president wants. Last year, Mr.
▶ 0:42:46Sen. Peters: Steiner, you issued a rule that explicitly said that the postal service has "no role in administering elections." what has changed?
▶ 0:42:58Mr. Steiner: I don't think anything has changed. Senator, I'm not a political person. The postal service is not a political organization. As you said, I think you aptly said, we deliver mail. That's what we do. We deliver mail. And that's what ballots are. Ballots are mail. Now, they are a special kind of mail, obviously. They need special care. And so years ago we recommended what we call kit 600.
▶ 0:43:26Mr. Steiner: Kit 600, the fundamental premise of kit 600 is a unique bar code and a unique envelope. That allows to us move those ballots more efficiently, more securely. That is what our proposed rules suggest, that we have a unique bar code, unique emblem. That is not something that is new. That's something that's been used by states throughout the country on both sides of the political spectrum.
▶ 0:43:56Mr. Steiner: So california has followed it, oregon has followed it, arizona has followed it, florida has followed it. Among many other states. You know, to me, it's not a political question, it's a question of how do we most efficiently and securely move ballots? We've been recommending this for many years, all this does is make it a requirement.
▶ 0:44:24Sen. Peters: Certainly best practices are different than having a mandatory requirement. You can follow best practices to deliver more efficiently without having control of vast voter rolls and having the ability to have that data. This is basically a back doorway for the federal government to get voting information that states control under the U.S. constitution. So yes or no, if a state refuses to turn their absentee voter list over to the federal government, will the postal service still mail their ballots under this proposal?
▶ 0:44:53Mr. Steiner: Under our proposed regulation, no. We would still the state we need the manifest in order to -- look, what we're asking --
▶ 0:45:01Sen. Peters: That's the answer. You'd tell them no. The proposed rule basically coerces states to con form to new requirements and hand over their absentee voter rolls, or face the consequences of not being able to vote by mail. Some states, that's all they do. Oregon is completely vote by mail f. They say no, we control the list, the states control the list --
▶ 0:45:25Mr. Steiner: Oregon has followed kit 600 since the day they started voting by mail.
▶ 0:45:28Sen. Peters: This will be a lot different issue. You're telling the states give the federal government this information, trust the federal government, trust the trump administration, we'll take good care of these. And if you don't do it, you can't mail absentee ballots. You're going to make a decision that people cannot vote by mail. That's unacceptable. Thank you, Mr. chairman.
▶ 0:45:49Mr. Steiner: All that does, senator, is make sure that we match the ballots that a state believes they're sending out to what actually gets sent out. So all the state gives us is a list of here are the voters that are supposed to get ballots and here are the ballots. We then compare the two, make sure that the ballots that are supposed to be sent get sent. You know, if maryland had followed that, they probably wouldn't be in the problem near this today.
▶ 0:46:14Mr. Steiner: It is a much more efficient, much more effective way to make sure that states -- I would think that states would want the information, to ensure that the ballots that they think they're sending out are the ballots that are actually being sent out.
▶ 0:46:29Sen. Peters: They do know what they're dropping mail. I think they can understand that. They think if they put an address with their voter rolls on a piece of mail for a ballot and give it to you, they do expect you're actually going to deliver it. You don't have to say we want all of your information. We want that information in our control. You mentioned medical. I think that was a printing error. This regulation wouldn't have done anything to fix what happened in maryland. The states control their own elections. It's pretty clear in the constitution.
▶ 0:46:58Sen. Peters: An effort by this administration to nationalize elections and have the federal government having this information is incredibly dangerous precedent. You can imagine sharing this information with the department of homeland security and using these lists for a variety of nefarious purposes. We need to protect the integrity of the voting rolls. We need to protect the separation of elections from federal government and ensure that our state and local governments are the ones administering their own elections. That's what this is about.
▶ 0:47:27Mr. Steiner: Well, we are the postal service. All we do is deliver mail. We're trying to deliver it securing, efficiently, and accurately.
▶ 0:47:38Chair Paul: Senator johnson.
▶ 0:47:39Sen. Johnson: Mr. steiner, welcome. Thank you for taking on this very thankless task and bringing your business acumen to the table here. From my standpoint, there's two problems. There's the operational problem. There's the unfunded liability problem. If there's a root cause to any of this, it's because congress, who has allowed this to be $about billion in debt, tries to micromanage the postal service with mandates, all kinds of other things.
▶ 0:48:09Sen. Johnson: I would agree with chairman paul, I would love to see you use your, you know, set the mandates, the congressional requirements aside, and just use your business acumen and go this is what we would need to do to make the postal system solvent, operational. This business has been losing revenue, losing volume for years. This isn't something new. Ok, that would be my request as well. Give us a detailed plan.
▶ 0:48:41Sen. Johnson: Get all the congressional mandates, but what would you do as a businessperson? Let's talk about the unfunded liability. When I was chairman of this committee in 2015, I got a lot of pressure to do postal reform. Postal reform always was a taxpayer bailout which would not fix it, not address it.
▶ 0:49:02Sen. Johnson: In 2022, we did post reforms, and we off loaded about $107 billion of the unfunded liability into medicare, which, by the way, is not particularly solvent either. You still have $166 billion in liability, correct?
▶ 0:49:16Mr. Steiner: That's correct.
▶ 0:49:19Sen. Johnson: How many years does somebody have to work in the postal service before they can retire on full retirement?
▶ 0:49:28Mr. Steiner: I don't plan to be here that long, so I never ask that question.
▶ 0:49:34Sen. Johnson: You do not know?
▶ 0:49:36Mr. Steiner: I do not know. You know what it was in your business, in waste management?
▶ 0:49:42Mr. Steiner: In waste management we didn't have a retirement plan. We had a 401(k).
▶ 0:49:47Sen. Johnson: It will be interesting to have that information. What is the postal service, what is average private sector? I think one of the problems is --
▶ 0:49:55Mr. Steiner: I do believe, senator, I believe, and I may misspeak, but I believe you start vesting at five years. I'm not sure when you fully vest.
▶ 0:50:05Sen. Johnson: I'd like to know that, because that's key information, and then compared against the private sector. I have to bring this up. I know the house passed a bill of 74 additional zip codes. We get requested, you responded to this committee, I think the cost of setting that up would be $800 million, $90 million a year, when you're hemorrhaging money every year. When you describe the problem, I'll call them vanity zip codes?
▶ 0:50:37Mr. Steiner: Sure, and first off, I do believe that we have some alternate type of solutions that we can do other than doing their own dedicated zip code, so I would love to have our staff speak with your staff, or with any of the other members of senate or congress that are looking at their own individualized zip code. I think we can come one another solution. The problem, it's interesting, because being the newbie here, you would think new zip code, pretty simple, right?
▶ 0:51:06Mr. Steiner: The problem is every single digit in that zip code means something. So if you change a digit, what do you have to do? You have to put a receiving facility there to receive that mail, right? And then as you go through our process, remember, 110 billion pieces every year, call it 300 some odd pieces every single day, our machines are set up by zip code. Boxes get transported to zip codes.
▶ 0:51:35Mr. Steiner: You start adding zip codes, what do you have to have to do? You have to add more bays and more boxes, not in one plant, but in every plant throughout the united states. That's why that $800 billion of capital that it would cost to do it sounds like a crazy number. It's not a crazy number, because you have to make that change everywhere throughout the system. And so what we're trying to do is to come up with ways where we can do it without the zip code.
▶ 0:52:05Mr. Steiner: Part of the reason why folks of the their own zip code have nothing to do with the mail. It's because it might give them different insurance rates, right? Let's address the underlying problem rather than adding another $800 billion of costs.
▶ 0:52:22Sen. Johnson: Million or billion? Billion, that's what I thought. We did a reform bill in 2022, $107 billion off the american taxpayer that didn't even come close to solving the problem. I think we need to really focus on that. I'm not going to do it until you fix the problem, $107 billion, didn't even touch the problem.
▶ 0:52:44Mr. Steiner: Yeah, and I think that is a perfect example of highway we got where we are, right? The problems that were fixed there were what I call the accounting problems, welfare, retirement, different things like that. They weren't the operational problems that plagued the postal service, the mandate that I talked about in my opening remarks. So that bill took care of a lot of the accounting issues, not all of them.
▶ 0:53:07Sen. Johnson: At the expense of the american taxpayer.
▶ 0:53:10Mr. Steiner: But it exacerbated the operational problem. How did it do that? It required six day a week delivery. What I'm here to say, let's have the discussion on how we hole look at fixing both the accounting issues and fix the operational issues. The operational issues have not been addressed in the prior reform act.
▶ 0:53:30Sen. Johnson: Thank you.
▶ 0:53:32Chair Paul: Snore hassan.
▶ 0:53:33Sen. Hassan: Thank you, Mr. chair, and ranking member peters for this hearing, and welcome in. Good to see you, Mr. steiner. As you already discussed with senator peters, the postal service recently proposed rules that would allow it to unilaterally block ballots from being sent to certain voters before they ever have the chance to cast a vote. This un-american plan will inevitably result in some law-abiding U.S.
▶ 0:53:59Sen. Hassan: Citizen not being able to receive the ballots they're entitled to and reduce citizen participation in our democracy. In my state in new hampshire, where people vote absentee only if they are physically unable to be at the polls on election day, and often don't know that that will be the case until kind of the 11th hour. It means that some eligible voters will be unable to vote in my state. The plan is also blatantly illegal.
▶ 0:54:25Sen. Hassan: The constitution is clear that states are responsible for elections, not the postal service. So I'll join with other colleagues in urging you to immediately withdraw this rule, but even setting aside the merits of the rule and your own views about whether it is legal, I want to ask a more basic question about the rule of law. If a court tells you to withdraw your rule or to not enforce it, will you follow that court order?
▶ 0:54:49Mr. Steiner: Obviously, yes, we follow court orders.
▶ 0:54:52Sen. Hassan: Good, ok. Moving on. On time delivery for first-class mail in the new hampshire region has fallen by more than 10 percentage points over the last eight years and is now more than five percentage points below the postal service's own target of 87%. That means nearly one in five letters are failing to arrive on time.
▶ 0:55:15Sen. Hassan: Prior efforts, including cuts to overtime and moving some mail processing out of new hampshire, likely have contributed to those delays. As congress considers options to address the postal service's financial deficit, those options will depend on your commitments to meet certain services levels. I think you laid that out today pretty well. What specific commitments can you make to maintaining on-time delivery in rural areas, and how can this committee hold you to them?
▶ 0:55:40Mr. Steiner: Yeah, we don't want to maintain on-time delivery. We want to improve on-time delivery. It really is, to me, that is the calling card of the postal service, right? That is the price of admission that we have. If we can't effectively and efficiently serve our customers, then I completely agree with you, you shouldn't give us any help.
▶ 0:56:04Mr. Steiner: As I've looked at it, a big part of what we've got going on is the fact that we don't have end to end visibility. That is what I call the moon shot at the postal service now. How do we get end-to-end visibility?
▶ 0:56:22Mr. Steiner: What happens, I won't go into a lot of detail, but what happens is when that box that's going to new hampshire gets delivered, and then it's supposed to go first in, first out, and then another 100 boxes get delivered, it gets buried somewhere and lost.
▶ 0:56:37Sen. Hassan: Just because my time is limited, what commitments can you make to continuing or improving on-time delivery areas? What do you need from this committee, and if you can brief and follow up later?
▶ 0:56:50Mr. Steiner: There are so many different categories of first-class mail, I'd love to have that. We should be delivering at least as well as our competition delivers packages. So we're talking 95%.
▶ 0:57:02Sen. Hassan: Rural america depends on the post office for a lot of things. The last mile delivery is critically important. We're talking about people's medications, we're talking about payments for small businesses and supplies. So this is really important to us. So let me just move on to one other issue, and I want to follow up on that last line of questioning with you and get some details and get some commitments. But during your house testimony on march 17, you committed to giving congress five-year financial projections on cost cutting measures.
▶ 0:57:32Sen. Hassan: In a subsequent letter, the committee asked you to respond by this friday. Getting timely analysis is critical for congress to act on your requests and understand the impacts of possible reforms on the services provided to our constituents. Will you meet friday's deadline?
▶ 0:57:46Mr. Steiner: Yes, I think we can meet friday's deadline. To be honest, I spent the last couple of days studying for this, so I vanity had a chance to look at that.
▶ 0:57:55Sen. Hassan: Have you read the analysis? It was due friday, and if you think you're going to meet the deadline.
▶ 0:58:00Mr. Steiner: Yes, so what we put together is basically, here's what our trend line is, and then here are the things that can move that trend line up and down, price, volume, productivity. So, you know, what we can get you is here's the trend, here's how we think we can bend that trend positively or neglect actively. I think that's exactly what it is.
▶ 0:58:24Sen. Hassan: What cost cutting measures have you identified as part of the analysis, and what impact would they have on the projected date that you'll run out of cash?
▶ 0:58:32Mr. Steiner: Yeah, when you look at what we're doing from a cost cutting point of view, it really, for us, is all about the effective and efficient movement of the mail. You've got to look at the various --
▶ 0:58:45Sen. Hassan: What specific measures have you identified and what does that do in terms of the projection?
▶ 0:58:51Mr. Steiner: Right, let's start with, let's walk through, if you want, we can walk through the entire mail system. You've got the carriers. The carriers deliver and pick up mail. We look all the time at how do we make those routes more efficient? Then you go to the processing plant. We're looking at how do we make that more prohibit. Obviously you have to have investments in technology. And then that mail gets transported. We're looking at how do you take out transportation costs.
▶ 0:59:15Mr. Steiner: As I mentioned, we've taken out $2 billion in transportation costs and then you've got it showing up again at another plant, where it ultimately gets delivered by the carrier, that whole cycle. We look at every single phase of it.
▶ 0:59:30Sen. Hassan: You have proposals, and I realize I'm over time, 10 what do the proposals do to the projection behalf you'll run out of money? Are you going to be able to be solvent for longer?
▶ 0:59:41Mr. Steiner: Yeah, you know, I do want to clear up a misconception, because I think the p.r.c. Testified that we've got cash to last us a certain amount of time. Let me be very, very, very, very clear. We are out of cash. We are out of cash. If we had to pay all of our bills today, we could not pay all of our bills today. We are out of cash.
▶ 1:00:05Mr. Steiner: What we are doing right now is we're basically borrowing money from our retirement plans to fund current operations. I'm not particularly comfortable with that. I promise you our employees are not comfortable with that.
▶ 1:00:19Sen. Hassan: And neither am I.
▶ 1:00:21Mr. Steiner: None of us should be comfortable with that. To me that's why we have to have this discussion of how we fix this broken business model.
▶ 1:00:28Sen. Hassan: I am over time. I want to follow up with you, and I hope you will be more clear about what the savings will do in terms of your cash flow and cash solvency.
▶ 1:00:37Mr. Steiner: Glad to come meet with you at any time you'd like to have that discussion. Glad to do it.
▶ 1:00:44Chair Paul: Senator langford.
▶ 1:00:47Sen. Langford: David, thanks. This is a tough task to be able to take on. I'm always interested when we in congress with talking to usps about how you balance your budget. I find that ironic for us to be able to be in that conversation as the body that has $2 trillion worth of overspending this year.
▶ 1:01:04Mr. Steiner: I wasn't going to bring that up.
▶ 1:01:07Sen. Lankford: No, I will. It is a challenge. We've got to figure it out. I want to drill down on multiple things here. Part of the challenge that you're facing is not only the complexity of the organization, the number of people that are in the organization, the equipment that are there, the out of date buildings and all the other things that are there that make this incredibly expensive to be able to manage. But the lack of flexibility to be able to actually fix this. I want to drill down on a couple of things.
▶ 1:01:35Sen. Lankford: In the short time you've been there so far, we're dealing with, over the last 15 years -- 10 years, andy only been there months at this point, over the last 10 years, delivery has gotten slower as well. We've got increasing amount of expenses and decreasing speed of service. In the same time period, amazon and wal-mart are racing to get deliveries to people's homes in two hours, and it's now taking five days for a lot of folks in rural america to get a letter moving, where it used to take two in the past.
▶ 1:02:05Sen. Lankford: As you're dealing with the debt in other areas, this has to be one of the areas you're focused on as well. It's just speed of delivery. That increases the volume of people actually using that. Where are you going on that?
▶ 1:02:15Mr. Steiner: Yeah, and that's what I was talking about, the moon shot, the visibility, right? The reason why -- well, let's look at the context first. Fedex, amazon, u.p.s., deliver anywhere from eight to 10 billion packages a year. We deliver 110 billion pieces every year. The magnitude, the difference in the networks is dramatic.
▶ 1:02:41Mr. Steiner: And so for us, it's all about visibility. We've got to know where that piece of mail is at any particular point in time. What happens is it gets involved to the back of the line and forgotten. So we are working on it right now to where we can get visibility into every piece, so that if we see that a piece is delayed, we can call that plant manager and say the piece is delayed. You know, this is not rocket science technology. This is not technology that doesn't exist.
▶ 1:03:10Mr. Steiner: This is technology that exists, that other companies use. Again, because we've underinvested in the network, because we don't have the cash. We vanity been able to get that end-to-end visibility. That is absolutely where our focus is right now.
▶ 1:03:26Sen. Lankford: It's interesting to me, there's been dialogue for a while about zip codes. This has been fascinating to me. A lot is really based around tax collection, quite frankly. Online business, trying to get tax revenue toe that local community. Let me give you a couple of ideas. We have a beautiful community in northern oklahoma called enid. An air force base is there, great community, fantastic folks. There's also north enid, which is a different town.
▶ 1:03:56Sen. Lankford: Everybody just thinks, oh, it's the northern part of enid. No, it's not, same zip code, and the confusion is always there between north ene di and enid. This is e this is interesting. They're not looking for a new post office or physical location. They're just trying to do better tracking of where actually revenue should go and how they should actually glow.
▶ 1:04:19Sen. Lankford: I can give you lots of different ideas, like a fabulous community in southeastern oklahoma, which is a great resort community around a lake. They're also connected to broken road. They're totally different operations between broken bow and another town, but the tax revenue is all go to one. How do we solve this? They aren't looking for a new physical place. They're just looking for a different number. Why is this so hard?
▶ 1:04:45Mr. Steiner: As I said earlier, every number means something in that zip code. And our entire network, so those 110 billion pieces only move because every number means something. And every time you add a new zip code, what do you have to have to do? You have to add something to the network. That's why when I first heard that it would cost $800 billion to fix all these zip codes, I thought, well, that's crazy. But it's true.
▶ 1:05:15Mr. Steiner: Because you don't fix -- there's not one light switch that you flip and say, ok, now the mail goes there. You've got to change the entire network, and that takes a lot o-
▶ 1:05:25Sen. Lankford: Is this a technology issue? Just every b every other same, you change the numbers.
▶ 1:05:32Mr. Steiner: It's not technology. It's physical as sets. For example, we'll have a sorter that's lined up, and it's going to have 24 bays in it. You add a zip code, you have to add a 25th, 26th bay. The boxes are going to that zip code, and you have to add that in every plant. So it's the multiplying effect of the capital that's required.
▶ 1:05:56Mr. Steiner: I would love to have our staff sit with your staff, and again, with any member of congress, let's figure out a way -- because the underlying problem isn't insurance rate, taxes. It's not delivery of mail. The underlying problem is not our problem. I would love to have us all get together and say how can we fix this and change it without having to massively change our system?
▶ 1:06:22Sen. Lankford: I look forward to that conversation. We've had good dialogue before about the electric vehicles that were purchased by previous administrations with no chargers and some of the waste that was done there that should have been actually going toward actually improving the quality of delivery on this rather than toward some other random goal that wasn't met. So thanks again for your work.
▶ 1:06:41Mr. Steiner: Thank you.
▶ 1:06:43Chair Paul: Thank
▶ 1:06:47Chair Paul: Th senator kim.
▶ 1:06:48Sen. Kim: I wanted to start by asking you about the census. This is something that's so vitally important to our country, explicitly stated within the constitution as a function of our government here. The census bureau is currently testing the use of postal workers to conduct the census. Is that correct?
▶ 1:07:06Mr. Steiner: That is correct.
▶ 1:07:07Sen. Kim: Is that something you approved?
▶ 1:07:09Mr. Steiner: Absolutely.
▶ 1:07:11Sen. Kim: I guess I wanted to ask, because this was looked into, this was examined during the first trump administration. What was the outcome of that pilot during the first trump administration?
▶ 1:07:22Mr. Steiner: I'm not familiar with any pilot that was done in the first administration. I wasn't here. I hate to speak to that. What I can tell you is we are in the middle of a pilot right now. They're small pilots. But in one, we actually have, we tell our mail carriers, you can become a numerator, so you have your current job, you can also be a numerator.
▶ 1:07:46Mr. Steiner: In the other pilot, we're using our carriers to get follow-up information from addresses. They're both going fairly well. Look, the only discussions I've ever had about this is how do we do it more efficiently and less costly for the american public. We'll see if we can do that through the pilot. You would think it would make sense we can do it more efficiently and cheaper, because we're already going out every day.
▶ 1:08:14Sen. Kim: I'm all for efficiency and saving money. But again, this is a function of our government that's laid out in the constitution. I'll be honest with you, it concerns me that you were not aware of a pilot program that did exactly, tried to do exactly this in the first trump administration, because look, I'm just going through the census government report right now, and there's a recommendation section here, and it says all pilot activity were discontinued based on the
▶ 1:08:45Sen. Kim: Conflicts of the requirements of 13 and 39u.s.c. So I guess I just wanted to ask you --
▶ 1:08:54Mr. Steiner: You can tell me what they are, because I don't know what they are.
▶ 1:08:57Sen. Kim: See, you don't come to us for the cheat codes here. This is something that you should be aware of as you are --
▶ 1:09:05Mr. Steiner: I am absolutely aware of it.
▶ 1:09:07Sen. Kim: So tell me --
▶ 1:09:09Mr. Steiner: Our legal department is absolute al wear of it. No one has said anything about us violating any particular statute.
▶ 1:09:16Sen. Kim: Can you tell me what the difference is between title 39 and title 13 then?
▶ 1:09:21Mr. Steiner: I'm not a lawyer, no, I couldn't. Well, I used to be a lawyer.
▶ 1:09:26Sen. Kim: I'm not a lawyer either, but I know the difference. Title 39 allows the postal service to share information with law enforcement and others during certain circumstances. In contrast, title 13 explicitly forbids sharing of individuals' census data for any purpose. The reason I raise this is that the pilots that you're trying to do down in huntsville and spartanburg, we've gone through this several years ago.
▶ 1:09:53Sen. Kim: And as mentioned, they were discontinued based off of irsect sign conflicts between these two. So the question is, if you're trying to move forward with this, what's different? Are you seeking legislative fixes? Are there other things you're doing that would try to show this?
▶ 1:10:10Mr. Steiner: Yeah, no, I am absolutely glad to get our staff together with your staff. I know those were issues. I know the oath was an issue. And I know that our legal department and the department of commerce and the census bureau's legal department looked at those issues, resolved those issues.
▶ 1:10:27Mr. Steiner: I cannot tell you the fundamental underpinnings of the legal statutes that do that, but -- glad to have anybody on your staff.
▶ 1:10:46Sen. Kim: I'm part of the committee that oversees the census, which is why we have been focused on this. I want to make sure we have congressional oversight to do a visit to these pilot programs and be able to learn more. Is that something you can agree to? The other thing I will say here -- I just want to raise this. We have been having some issues down at the trenton processing facility.
▶ 1:11:09Sen. Kim: There was an osha inspection, some continued things that have not been remedied that I have been hearing from some of my constituents. I just wanted to ask, would you be able to ensure that you will work with me to make sure that anything that is outstanding in terms of the concerns that were raised are ones we can remedy?
▶ 1:11:29Mr. Steiner: Yes, thank you for bringing that to my attention. Safety is my number one priority. I won't send you to my staff to follow up on that. Call me and I will be sure to follow up.
▶ 1:11:43Sen. Kim: I will make sure we get each other's numbers. Thank you. I yield back.
▶ 1:11:48Sen. Scott: Thanks for being here. I don't understand how this loses money. It does not make sense to me. If you could not get more money out of the government and we did not let you borrow more money -- the post office -- I have been up here seven years. It never makes money. So we are not fixing anything.
▶ 1:12:19Sen. Scott: There is not a solution here. If there were no limitations on what you could do, what would you do?
▶ 1:12:25Mr. Steiner: You may have seen the press reports. We actually brought in the preeminent restructuring firm in the world to look and tell us exactly that. Let's assume that we are not going to get any help. What are we going to do? They are in the process of putting that report together.
▶ 1:12:49Mr. Steiner: I would tell you that there is absolutely no doubt that that would lead to a streamed down pistol service. It would lead to delays in service. Look. As the chairman very appropriately pointed out, 80% of our costs are labor costs. There is only one way you can become profitable here, and that is address the labor costs.
▶ 1:13:17Mr. Steiner: We would have to go in and look at how we can change days of service, reduce the level of services, and we would have to shut down a massive number of locations.
▶ 1:13:31Sen. Scott: I looked -- if you look at the number of pieces of marketing mail versus the revenue, it is dramatically less per piece than first class. Why is that? First off, I'm sure we all love all the marketing mail we get. I have to get an extra recycling bin for it.
▶ 1:13:54Mr. Steiner: My old business. We loved that, by the way.
▶ 1:14:00Sen. Scott: The recycling people.
▶ 1:14:01Mr. Steiner: But it is the antiquated pricing structure that was imposed upon us. By the p.r.c., the public regulatory commission.
▶ 1:14:16Sen. Scott: Who is that?
▶ 1:14:17Mr. Steiner: They were set up when the postal service was split so that they could oversee this quote unquote monopoly. In 1970 one, arguably we were a monopoly. There is zero chance that we are a monopoly at this point in time. So I completely agree with the chairman. It seems to me that we have a regulatory body that is regulating in a past era.
▶ 1:14:46Scott: They want you to make money?
▶ 1:14:50Mr. Steiner: What I understood from them -- they say they have to balance a number of things.
▶ 1:14:57Sen. Scott: The marketing mail?
▶ 1:14:59Mr. Steiner: Here is the balance they did last. They told us we can only raise prices once a year, and they acknowledged that that could be $700 million for the postal service. That could cost us 700 million dollars. In their opinion, they said that does not make a big dent in their total loss, so we are going to do it. Who does that benefit? The marketers.
▶ 1:15:27Mr. Steiner: That is $700 billion that got transferred from us directly to our customers.
▶ 1:15:37Sen. Scott: The taxpayers pay for it, right, because we are going to have to cover your losses.
▶ 1:15:41Mr. Steiner: That is absolutely correct. I think your point is absolutely correct. A normal business takes price and volume and finds the best mix.
▶ 1:15:53Sen. Scott: Why are they in existence? Why do you need them?
▶ 1:15:56Mr. Steiner: We don't need them, but they are in existence, ostensibly because we are a monopoly and they have to regulate the monopoly.
▶ 1:16:05Sen. Scott: How many marketing contracts have you lost to fedex and ups? Just for marketing mail.
▶ 1:16:12Mr. Steiner: Marketing mail, we are the only ones that deliver marketing mail. We do have a monopoly on the mailbox.
▶ 1:16:23Sen. Scott: And you have to charge less than first class. So a letter I want to send to my grandkid costs me more than the marketing stuff I don't want to read.
▶ 1:16:31Mr. Steiner: Absolutely. And senator, you would not believe how arcane and complicated those pricing rules are because there are so many different classes and so many different discounts. You definitely need an advanced degree to understand it.
▶ 1:16:46Sen. Scott: You acknowledge that if we go borrow money, you are going to come back later and ask for the taxpayer to pay for it.
▶ 1:16:55Mr. Steiner: Well, no. I truly believe, and this is in defense of the mailing industry -- I truly believe that if we become an economic engine rather than just thinking of us in terms of delivery, and we helped grow that industry, it is a $2 trillion industry. And actually, the marketing that they do is very effective.
▶ 1:17:22Mr. Steiner: We can make it more effective if we can manage the price per volume.
▶ 1:17:27Sen. Scott: If they are going to make money off it, they should pay for it.
▶ 1:17:29Mr. Steiner: I would hope they do pay for it through paying taxes. Look, I completely agree on the pricing. We have to match price and volume that is best for us. But I truly do believe that this $2 trillion ecosystem -- we have a choice to either shrink it or grow it. It has been shrinking for the past 15 years. As it continues to shrink, net dollars into the treasury get reduced.
▶ 1:17:57Mr. Steiner: I think it is a discussion worth having. And look, you all get to make those policy decisions. I will do it either way. I do think it is a discussion worth having.
▶ 1:18:08Chair Paul: Rick, I think you have hit on this. If you combine the p.r.c. With the board of governors and make it one entity, they can make the price is what they need. If you go from $.78 to $.95, that is $1.6 billion. If you go from six days to four days, that is $6 billion. You almost wiped out your entire debt by wiping out for days and not allowing the price to go up. You could even allow people to keep six days if they wanted to pay for it.
▶ 1:18:37Chair Paul: You will find there are not going to be a lot of votes to allow that to happen. Hiring fees also saves $1.5 billion. There are things that can immediately wipe out your $9 billion, but you probably would have to go to less days of delivery. And price helps. That is $1.6 billion or $9.5 billion.
▶ 1:19:01Mr. Steiner: We looked a little bit at that too.
▶ 1:19:06Sen. Slotkin: Thank you for being here. I think you have heard in a bipartisan way the importance of the postal service, particularly to rural americans. It is a lifeline.
▶ 1:19:23Sen. Slotkin: Hearing you talk about how there is going to need to be reductions in service because you don't have the cash, when most americans have just watched us launch a war that we think is going to cost at least $80 billion, you can imagine how that hits to someone who says how do we not have the ability to fund my rural postal delivery so I can get my medication or
▶ 1:19:55Sen. Slotkin: Vital information in my postbox, but we somehow have money for everything else. So I encourage you to advocate and push back where you can. We want you to succeed. We want the post office to succeed. But I want to follow up on some of the lines of questioning that we had on this side of the aisle , particularly from senator peters, on the role of the U.S.
▶ 1:20:19Sen. Slotkin: Post office in our elections, because I can't think of something that is more important than our democracy and making sure we have free and fair elections. The U.S. postal service is now part of this bigger story of this president desperate to federalize our elections. He has tried every which way to say that if he and his party don't win in these november elections, they were rigged. He said it in the state of the union.
▶ 1:20:50Sen. Slotkin: And now we have this new rule that you have put out, saying that states have to turn over their voting rolls, and you, the U.S. postal service, will decide who is approved to send their ballot through the mail. It is just another backdoor way of trying to influence this election.
▶ 1:21:08Sen. Slotkin: And to show the level of obsession that this president has literally left the leader, senator thune, on the stage right now, and canceled the signing of a housing bill like eight minutes ago, until we pass the save act, this obsession he has, which will disenfranchise a huge number of voters. He is obsessed with this and he has pulled in the U.S. postal service. Have you ever voted by mail?
▶ 1:21:34Mr. Steiner: I have not.
▶ 1:21:38Sen. Slotkin: Do you believe that a piece of mail that is put in a mailbox should be sent no matter what? Do you believe that his your obligation?
▶ 1:21:45Mr. Steiner: We have a lot of different rules. If you want the no answer, I would say no. Obviously, if it is dangerous.
▶ 1:21:56Sen. Slotkin: A letter that is not a threat. Just a piece of mail that is not a weapon. It is not a threat. It is a ballot. Do you believe right now it is your obligation to send that ballot to its intended recipient?
▶ 1:22:11Mr. Steiner: Yeah, we send every piece of mail that we send in accordance with our regulations.
▶ 1:22:19Sen. Slotkin: The state of michigan is about to start mail-in voting, the end of june, for our primary. If a 60-year-old woman in grayling, michigan puts that ballot after june 25 into one of the U.S. postal service's mailboxes, as she has done for many elections, will you direct the postal service to deliver that ballot?
▶ 1:22:42Mr. Steiner: I don't have to direct the postal service to do that because we do that every day. That is exactly what we do.
▶ 1:22:52Sen. Slotkin: So why are you demanding that michigan voter rolls are being presented to you? The president has sued us. We are in court right now. He has sued us in a bunch of other states for our voting roles. He is obsessed with this. The constitution gives the right to states to execute elections. So you are a pawn in this, unfortunately. I don't think you are a bad person for what I know of you. You ran a big company.
▶ 1:23:19Sen. Slotkin: But you are part of a big story playing out on a stage right now. If you don't get michigan's voter rolls for the general election in november, will you move those ballots in your mailboxes?
▶ 1:23:32Mr. Steiner: Remember, right now, we only have a proposed rule, so there are new rules.
▶ 1:23:39Sen. Slotkin: But you have proposed it.
▶ 1:23:40Mr. Steiner: We did. We will move those ballots in accordance with whatever rule is in effect at that point in time.
▶ 1:23:51Sen. Slotkin: You proposed it. It is your rule. So you want it to pass.
▶ 1:23:54Mr. Steiner: Yes. As I said before, this is not something that is new. This is something that we have been recommending for many, many, many years. It is a process that is followed by a lot of states already -- states like california and oregon. States like florida.
▶ 1:24:16Sen. Slotkin: I have no problem with a barcode being put on a piece of mail and following it like that. I think it is important to understand, especially since you are a lawyer -- not this kind of lawyer, but you are a lawyer -- that you are being used as part of a much bigger story that this president is trying to play out, where he does not believe elections he loses are valid elections. He is willing to do just about anything to show that he is actually a big winner, no matter what he does.
▶ 1:24:47Sen. Slotkin: I ask you as a professional, as someone who has done serious things in your life, please push back on being a pawn in this authoritarian playbook. The postal service is one of the most important institutions in our country. Don't taint it with the obsession of this one man. Please push back.
▶ 1:25:08Sen. Ernst: Thank you, postmaster general, for being here today. We have talked a little bit about the rural delivery. I think of so many of us have constituents that reside outside of that 50 mile perimeter that the post office wanted to focus their deliveries on, around those regional processing and distribution centers. That is basically what the delivering for america plan did.
▶ 1:25:36Sen. Ernst: And unfortunately, it has left a lot of our rural americans behind, because they live outside of those 50 mile circles around these distribution centers. And in early 2025, I think the postal regulatory commission seemed to agree with the problem, and it recommended that the postal service reconsider its plan, the dfa plan, because so many of those rural
▶ 1:26:07Sen. Ernst: Communities will experience disproportionate downgrading of service standards. And we have seen that. Postmaster general, what is the postal service doing under your leadership now to make sure that we are protecting the delivery to all of our rural constituents?
▶ 1:26:25Mr. Steiner: It is a great question and it is not just rural constituents. It is all constituents. We have not been as good as we should be in delivering to all of america. As I look at it -- I have been here 10 months. I would say that I have been here not a long period of time, but long enough to be able to see the core issues. And the core issue is that we built this vast network.
▶ 1:26:55Mr. Steiner: The network we built is logistics 101. It is hub and spoke, which has been every single logistics company in the history of the world since 1955, when delta airlines invented it. Every logistics company uses it. The system we have put in place makes total sense. The problem is, we did not learn how to operate that system as we were building it, right?
▶ 1:27:21Mr. Steiner: And so what you have seen over the last 18 months is really some pretty dramatic increases in our services because we are actually starting to understand how to manage the network effectively. You will continue to see that. You will continue to see improvements in service.
▶ 1:27:41Mr. Steiner: But I will tell you what irritates me more than anything is what we call the tail of the mail. I don't think constituents care whether they get their mail in three days or four days. What they care about is when they get a wedding invitation after the wedding. They get a bill and it is already overdue. That is a different animal. That is not a network issue. That is a visibility of the peace issue.
▶ 1:28:11Mr. Steiner: That is where we are 100% focused right now. I would tell you I would rather have 100% of the mail delivered in a reasonable period of time than saying let's just have 95% delivered in a certain period of time and the other 5% we don't care about.
▶ 1:28:31Sen. Ernst: I appreciate that. We have got to modernize. I understand the hub and spoke logistical model. That is important. But we realize as demographics shift or populations shift, there has to be modernization along the way. I'm going to hit on the zip code issue as well. I know everyone has issues with this. I have a bill with several other colleagues this year to correct a number of zip codes.
▶ 1:28:59Sen. Ernst: It hit on a community in iowa that has been experiencing a lot of difficulties. Urbandale, iowa was incorporated in 1917, well over a century now. This community of 47,000 people has six different zip codes in the mail is continuously directed to the wrong post offices. So mail is ending up in the next community over, and people are chasing down the mail.
▶ 1:29:30Sen. Ernst: They have people that have to leave their school to go drive to the next community over to get their postal deliveries. We have medical centers that have mail misdirected to another community. So it has been a big issue, and the city has routinely been ignored, and they have exhausted all of their appeals now. So it has been a really big issue.
▶ 1:29:57Sen. Ernst: And the post office continually comes back and says it is about tax collection or whatever. Ok. A lot of excuses out there. But I'm sorry. This is one community with six different postal codes. It is 47,000 people. It has got to be addressed. We should not have to pass this legislation to address this situation, but we are going to have to because we feel we have been ignored and put off for way too long.
▶ 1:30:24Sen. Ernst: I am raising that issue in front of you today so you understand this is a great frustration. I think in this bill we have I don't know how many communities, maybe 75 communities we are going to try to address. And then I also want to address what senator scott brought up, talking about the marketing mail. I actually do have a bill that would address this and help you out considerably. It is a bill addressing political junk mail.
▶ 1:30:52Sen. Ernst: Because I'm sorry, republicans and democrats alike -- we are sending out a lot of flyers at a discounted price, and we should disallow that. Political committees, you name it, our own committees -- we should have to pay the full price to send out the political junk mail. I enjoy it. I am in this world. But you know what? When I get political flyers in the mail at home, I also am using the recycling bin, ok?
▶ 1:31:25Sen. Ernst: Again, my bill would require their the postal service to send mail from those qualified political committees at a regular rate. So we see 2.3 billion pieces of political mail every single year, and that would certainly contribute to your revenue stream if we got rid of that discounted rate.
▶ 1:31:45Mr. Steiner: The amazing thing I say about this organization is it is the law of large numbers. $2.3 billion -- 2.3 billion times a small amount is a huge amount. It is the amazing thing about this organization. 110 billion pieces -- it does not take a lot to create a lot of revenue.
▶ 1:32:05Sen. Ernst: I am well over my time. Thank you for indulging.
▶ 1:32:10Sen. Gallego: 's in arizona, residents are forced to retrieve mail from a po box at the local post office. 40 years ago, san luis was 2000 people. It is now 35,000 people. It is on the border of the arizona-mexico border. The post office is heavily congested and running out of space and capacity.
▶ 1:32:33Sen. Gallego: Also, because of backups at the border, when people are crossing the border in the morning or in the evening, trying to go back, especially day laborers, that street becomes a wall. It is nearly impossible for residents and san luis to go east or west along that. This is affecting people who have multiple jobs, our disabled veterans, are having a tough time going to pick up their checks. It has caused a lot of heart ache.
▶ 1:33:01Sen. Gallego: We have been asking the post office for almost generations now to address this. Do you think the post office can find the time, the money, and the focus to actually add more home delivery in this booming town of 35,000?
▶ 1:33:14Mr. Steiner: To me, that is the fundamental question of why we are here today, right? I said it before. To the chairman's point -- how do you reduce costs? A long time ago -- 170 million points of delivery every year, growing by a million every year, at the same time that volumes of mail are decreasing by 5% to 8%. That is a recipe for disaster.
▶ 1:33:47Mr. Steiner: The math does not work there.
▶ 1:33:48Sen. Gallego: It is not been distributed. These are areas of the country that are growing versus not growing. You look at the western states -- texas, nevada --
▶ 1:34:01Mr. Steiner: This is a conversation with you. We need to realize -- we can do whatever you want. We will do whatever you want. Who is going to pay for it, right? Those are the decisions we have to make every day. Absolutely glad to personally take a look at the situation you are talking about individually. I have to look at it collectively. I cannot look at it as 30,000 stops.
▶ 1:34:29Mr. Steiner: I have to look at it as 170 million.
▶ 1:34:32Sen. Gallego: 's it is not evenly distribute it, growth versus not growth. With the amount of data you have, you could find some solutions here.
▶ 1:34:41Mr. Steiner: Love to talk with you, obviously.
▶ 1:34:46Sen. Gallego: In terms of money, that rings very hollow to these communities when they see ballrooms, jets, stupid wars, and all this money being spent, and all they are asking is for what everyone else gets. The reason this hurts them is because they see all the other communities around them, and they'll get home delivery. They get home delivery of things they need. Now, we are seeing the increase in home deliveries of prescription drugs, for example. We are literally affecting people's health.
▶ 1:35:15Sen. Gallego: People are missing the opportunity to get their timely prescriptions. This is a rural town. It is hard to get a lot of stuff. Mail is one of the things that can be consistent. Over time, it has gotten worse and worse. I know you have this whole world you have to look at. Come down to san luis, arizona. Come down at 4:00 p.m. And see what these residents have been dealing with for almost 40 years. I guarantee you there could be a solution. Maybe it is time to do something on the other side of the street.
▶ 1:35:46Sen. Gallego: These families are really being affected. It is starting to affect business and things of that nature.
▶ 1:35:52Chair Paul: Senator moreno?
▶ 1:35:55Sen. Moreno: Thank you for being here. If I could offer a suggestion, if you would be willing to work with our office and our team -- let's put together the ideas you have. I'm intrigued by your success in the business world. Let's put together these ideas. How would you put the package of reforms together and move the ball forward and get something done? One of the things about politics -- there are a lot of people who love to talk here, but who very seldom like to take action.
▶ 1:36:24Sen. Moreno: I would like to work with you to get some meaningful things done. When I came in, it is interesting. There was this very fancy binder about post office reform. But this hearing has turned into a mail-in ballot in conversation and principles of the constitution, which is very heartwarming to someone who swore an oath to the constitution when he became a U.S. citizen. I was 18.
▶ 1:36:48Sen. Moreno: Are you familiar -- I don't expect you, but just in case -- there was a bill the democrats brought up during the biden administration. As you know, bills are numbered. Bill number one is the first when they do. I think we are now at bill number 5000. It was called hr one, and there was also s1, meaning it was the number one priority of democrats in the house and democrats in the senate. Do you remember what that bill was about? I would not expect you to.
▶ 1:37:15Sen. Moreno: I would not expect you, a business guy, to pay attention to this stuff. It was called the for the people act. The democrats are phenomenal at false advertising. It basically nationalized our elections. So this bill they had that was their number one priority was about nationalizing the elections. So I know that we live in a world where there is supreme hypocrisy.
▶ 1:37:39Sen. Moreno: But the idea that democratic witness after democrat witness, instead of talking about how to fix the post office -- we're talking about the scandalous idea that somehow states rights were being violated. And yet three years ago, they wanted to take over the entire election system of the united states of america, not to give it more voter integrity, but to diminish voter integrity. Universal mail out ballots, unsolicited ballots, automatic voter registration regardless of whether there is a test to see if that person is a citizen.
▶ 1:38:11Sen. Moreno: And Mr. chairman, you were here. You will remember. They could not get it passed. You have to get 60 votes. We have to get 60 votes. So what do the democrats advocate for? What did they fight for? They wanted to get rid of the filibuster. They wanted to get rid of the filibuster so that they could pass nationalized elections. Three years later, all of them are testifying to say it is outrageous president trump is trying to nationalize our elections.
▶ 1:38:41Sen. Moreno: He is not. He is trying to get rid of voter fraud. If it wasn't for kristin's name and joe manchin, getting rid of the filibuster would have happened. They would have made D.C. and puerto rico a state. They would have packed our supreme court. But now all they dug up from their bottom desk drawer the united states constitution, and they are appalled as they are here talking to you and say it is a total disgrace. So we get back to post office stuff now? Let's talk about the post office.
▶ 1:39:11Sen. Moreno: How do you see the post office's role in combating scams and illicit activity? How do you see that from your lens?
▶ 1:39:19Mr. Steiner: We have the postal inspection service, the longest established law enforcement agency in the united states. And they are looking at that constantly. As you can imagine, a lot of those scams go after the most vulnerable -- shut-ins -- older folks. We are looking at it -- I talked with our chief inspector.
▶ 1:39:47Mr. Steiner: And where we are moving now is more toward hiring agents not that having gone and knock on a door, but hiring agents that have a keypad and work on the computer. We get a lot of information through things like that. The question is not how do we stop it after it happens, but how do we start to figure out how to stop it before it happens, right?
▶ 1:40:17Mr. Steiner: We have got a number of inspectors working on just that.
▶ 1:40:23Sen. Moreno: So you view it is not just our job is to deliver anything, but there are scammers out there. There are bad actors out there. And you do have an important role to say somebody is being targeted with a scam or there is some untoward activity -- drugs. You have knocked out a lot of what the drug cartels do, sending illicit drugs through the mail. It is an important piece of what the post office does.
▶ 1:40:50Sen. Moreno: It is not just that anything is mailed no matter what it is, correct?
▶ 1:40:54Mr. Steiner: Obviously, we have rules on what we can and cannot do. But yes, we do absolutely view our goal is making sure we protect the public.
▶ 1:41:09Sen. Moreno: You don't want to stop for dollar offers for large pizzas even though it may be unhealthy. But transitioning, if the post office inspector were to look at unsolicited mail and mail out ballots, where you go to an apartment complex and one unit is receiving six ballots -- that is a problem, right?
▶ 1:41:34Sen. Moreno: If there is only one human being that lives in that apartment, and that one human being is receiving six ballots, none of which are in their name, he would not just suggest -- my democratic colleagues, elvis has left the building here. You would not suggest that that one person receive ballots that they did not ask for that are not in their name. You would go this is a problem, correct?
▶ 1:42:02Mr. Steiner: Anytime we see what we would consider potential illegal activity -- obviously, there are search warrants. There are different rules you have to follow. But that is what our postal inspection service is therefore, is to look for those type of situations. We don't open mail. We don't stop the delivery of mail. But we can certainly go to other agencies from a law-enforcement point of view.
▶ 1:42:33Sen. Moreno: This is a problem. We are seeing potential illegal activity. I totally understand. I wanted to give a quick anecdote. I was asked by the governor to go down to where I was born in columbia -- colombia, south america. I said, why don't you allow people to vote by mail? There are some people who cannot get to locations. Obviously, we are speaking spanish.
▶ 1:42:59Sen. Moreno: He turned to his aide and said, I don't think the senator is saying the right words. I am not understanding his question. I repeated it. He looked at me quizzically and said, if you just mailed somebody a ballot without knowing who is receiving it, that would open the door to massive fraud. He would have to be completely insane to run an election that way. This is a country with a gdp the size of l.a., lecturing the U.S. about why we should run our elections better.
▶ 1:43:28Sen. Moreno: I think we should look at that as a moment of opportunity.
▶ 1:43:33Sen. Hawley: Welcome. Good to see you. I want to show you a picture, just a start. This is north st. Louis, missouri. This is april 29 of this year. This is around north taylor avenue. This is a pile of mail. Thousands of pieces of mail. Tax documents. Prescription drugs. Bills. Utility. Communications from companies.
▶ 1:44:03Sen. Hawley: Thousands and thousands of documents. As you might imagine, the residents of st. Louis, when this was discovered on april 20 nine, were absolutely outraged, not just because they're mail has been slow and misdelivered for years now. And now we have thousands of pieces of mail. Some of the postmarks, this was not going across the country. You have letters that were just going across town that had been dumped.
▶ 1:44:30Sen. Hawley: The postal service promised the public and me when this was discovered that there would be a full accounting of this. We would find out what happened and we would have a full and total investigation and complete transparency. Since that time, I have heard nothing. That was april. I have heard nothing. What is the answer?
▶ 1:44:49Mr. Steiner: My answer would be come up when you put that in front of me, I am outraged. And I think everybody in the postal service that bleeds postal blue would be outraged.
▶ 1:45:03Sen. Hawley: That was months ago. What have you done since then?
▶ 1:45:05Mr. Steiner: Since this is the first time I have heard about it --
▶ 1:45:10Sen. Hawley: I have written to you. Members of the delegation have written to you. Listen. I get thousands of pieces of mail a week about the post office, people's mail not being delivered. Here it is in a pile, and you are telling me this is the first time you have heard about it? It is june!
▶ 1:45:28Mr. Steiner: It's the first time I've heard about it.
▶ 1:45:31Sen. Hawley: Don't you think that is exceptional? What is going on was to mark you don't know?
▶ 1:45:36Mr. Steiner: I don't think I have heard about it.
▶ 1:45:39Sen. Hawley: What is going on in the management of the postal service that you have a pile of thousands of pieces of mail in a major city and this is the first time -- you are the postmaster general and you are telling me it is the first time you have heard about it. Who works for you?
▶ 1:45:53Mr. Steiner: 640 thousand people.
▶ 1:45:57Sen. Hawley: Maybe you want to fire some of them. Do you think this is doing the job? You are missing your targets all over my state. Let's take a look. Another picture. Your targets for on-time delivery in my state, which were not good to begin with, just in the 90's, meaning you can miss it 10% of the time and still give yourself an a grade. In 2025, you are hitting your on-time delivery targets 76% of the time.
▶ 1:46:24Sen. Hawley: Maybe a quarter of the time, best case scenario -- people's mail is not being delivered to them. Why is this not changing?
▶ 1:46:32Mr. Steiner: It is changing. If you look at the numbers, you will see the numbers have been increasing.
▶ 1:46:40Sen. Hawley: It is not changing. That is this year. That is april of this year. Just last year, the inspector general, when I asked him to do an audit of the st. Louis distribution center, the inspector told me it was the worst case of lack of on-time delivery, the worst case of distribution problems, he had ever seen, ever, in an audit he had done. Ever! What has changed since then?
▶ 1:47:05Mr. Steiner: Go online. Publish our service.
▶ 1:47:10Sen. Hawley: I don't want to go online. I want you to come here with answers because you are the postmaster general of the united states. I don't want to be told you don't know what is going on in my home state when I have written to you, when I have called you, when my residents have called you, when they are paying taxes and paying these postal service increases. I don't want to be told go online. I want answers. The other thing I want to know is why are you getting bonuses and members of your staff getting bonuses for this kind of performance? Let's look at the numbers.
▶ 1:47:40Sen. Hawley: The postmaster general's of this country in the last 10 years have gotten bonuses over $2 million. You got a bonus last year, 305,007 hundred $81. -- #305,781. Why are you getting bonuses when my constituents can't get the mail?
▶ 1:48:02Mr. Steiner: I don't control bonuses. Our board of governors --
▶ 1:48:07Sen. Hawley: Will you pledge not to take them?
▶ 1:48:08Mr. Steiner: Will you pledge to reward our people question Sen.
▶ 1:48:13Hawley: No, no, no. Don't turn it around. You are in charge of the postal service and we have given you everything you have asked for. Just three years ago, this congress allotted tens of billions of dollars to the postal service. I'm glad you think it is funny, postmaster general. You think this situation is funny. Let the record reflect the postmaster general is laughing as he is asked why he is taking bonuses when there are piles of undelivered mail in my state. It is a disgrace. It is an absolute disgrace.
▶ 1:48:42Mr. Steiner: Let the record reflect I was laughing when you said we have been given everything we were -- we asked for.
▶ 1:48:50Sen. Hawley: You have been given an opportunity to deliver the mail and you are laughing at it, telling me you are unprepared, and you won't pledge not to take bonuses. So you are going to keep taking them? Is that what you are telling me? Will you refuse bonuses so long as the mail goes undelivered? Yes or no. Will you refuse bonuses until the mail gets delivered? Yes or no?
▶ 1:49:11Mr. Steiner: What mail?
▶ 1:49:14Sen. Hawley: This is extraordinary. You want the money. Unbelievable. I am absolutely astounded at this today. Frankly, if things don't get better, you want to resign, because you are not doing the job. You are hanging your workers out to dry. They are working their butts off, they are getting blamed, and you are getting the bonus. We have a big problem.
▶ 1:49:43Sen. Hawley: Based on what I have seen today, you are part of it.
▶ 1:49:45Chair Paul: I have a follow-up question on this. The piles of mail that were depicted in the picture near st. Louis -- do you look at that mail -- can you find out the day it was supposed to be delivered and who the delivery person was?
▶ 1:50:02Mr. Steiner: Absolutely. I would expect -- I do not know every detail of every piece of mail. But I would expect that there has been --
▶ 1:50:12Chair Paul: I think the senator and the committee deserves to know. I would think within a week you should be able to get back to us with a report because it would take me about 30 minutes to look at that mail and the address and the timestamp and say, joe smith was delivering the mail that day and joe smith dumped it. Joe smith should be indicted.
▶ 1:50:37Mr. Steiner: I totally agree with you.
▶ 1:50:40Chair Paul: When you get back to us within the week?
▶ 1:50:43Mr. Steiner: I think we can get back to you within an hour. My guess is our folks know exactly what is going on.
▶ 1:50:49Chair Paul: If it does not involve an indictment, we are going to want to know why and by that person still works for the post office.
▶ 1:50:56Mr. Steiner: I would like to know that, if that is the case. Absolutely.
▶ 1:51:00Chair Paul: You mentioned you have hired a preeminent restructuring firm. They have completed the report for you? You said you had hired a preeminent restructuring firm to look at the post office. Has that report been given to you? When will that be completed?
▶ 1:51:22Mr. Steiner: I'm not absolutely sure, but I'm sure there are a lot of findings in draft form.
▶ 1:51:32Sen. Paul: Will that report be sent to us?
▶ 1:51:35Mr. Steiner: I'm glad to do it.
▶ 1:51:37Chair Paul: I would send it to the committee. You can start with the chair and the ranking member, and then others who want it as well. That is exactly what we need, as someone who restructures a business -- that is what you would do if you were in waste management, losing money. You would react. It is part of the answer. It is also, when you have these hearings -- there still is too much of "well congress has not let me do all these things so I can't." there is truth to that.
▶ 1:52:08Chair Paul: But there is also true that the hiring freeze can save $3 billion a year. You say it is in place. I understand if the vice president of the post office resigns, you replace them. But most all of the other jobs, through attrition. We also show a concerted strategy. The only way to save money -- the government is not efficient. They are not bad people. But you don't have a profit motive and you have too many restrictions.
▶ 1:52:36Chair Paul: So you will never -- not you, but the post office will never be efficient. The only way to make them more efficient is to outsource to companies that have to make a profit. You have to look at this. You have to aggressively do it. You have to aggressively do the opposite of what dejoy was doing. You have to aggressively do the things you are allowed to do. Hiring freeze and outsourcing are the simple things you can do.
▶ 1:53:03Chair Paul: Anything you can stop that he put in place that is not already going -- I don't think there is the hope that you were going to somehow outcompete amazon or ups or something. You really should not be trying to get more into their business. You should be trying to have less business, period, and try to have less of the government doing any business that you are involved with, because -- and I think you would still lose money. If you outsourced 100%, you would still lose money.
▶ 1:53:32Chair Paul: I am more than interested in the idea of designing the prc if there is legislation to do that. In the meantime, everything within your power to bug at the prc, as well as talking to us to get the permission to raise the rates. Nobody likes higher rates. We also don't like a 9 billion dollar loss every year. So all these things have to be done.
▶ 1:53:55Chair Paul: If we truly were saving I think you said to billion dollars on transportation and $3 billion on hiring, that would be $5 billion. That would mean the deficit this coming year would be about four instead of nine.
▶ 1:54:09Mr. Steiner: Remember, if we are allowed to invest, in a sense, in a conservative matter, and if the csrs allocation gets done the way it should be done, and everybody believes it should be done, that eliminates about 60% of the loss right there.
▶ 1:54:27Chair Paul: My guess is it won't be 4 billion next year. What is the projection? When do you total your deficit for the year? Is it with our fiscal calendar september 30?
▶ 1:54:38Mr. Steiner: Yes. And we look at controllable and non-controllable.
▶ 1:54:43Chair Paul: I know there is a number. Last year, it was 9.5 billion.
▶ 1:54:48Mr. Steiner: The controllable is closer to three.
▶ 1:54:51Chair Paul: We just have to go with the deficit. You can't paper it over and make it something it is not. What is your projection in the current year?
▶ 1:54:59Mr. Steiner: Because of the actuarial of the county -- I don't pay attention to the noncontrollable loss. I pay attention to controllable loss. We think that is around 2.7, 2.8 billion.
▶ 1:55:16Chair Paul: What is the deficit? What are you going to lose this year?
▶ 1:55:21Mr. Steiner: We have to look at retirement, actuarial numbers. It will be a net 9 billion to $10 billion.
▶ 1:55:30Chair Paul: You can see how hearing these numbers, it does not add up. If you save $2 billion in transportation, it would now be at 7.5. The thing is that the numbers are not adding up. I agree you are trying to do some savings. But if you add two plus three, that is five. The numbers are not adding up. The deficit is going to be just as bad as it was the last year, and it is getting worse.
▶ 1:56:00Chair Paul: All of these things -- it is crunch time. You really have to show us that you are doing everything possible, and you have to reverse what dejoy did. Dejoy messed it up and made it worse. It was already broken and he re-broke it and scrambled it into a thousand pieces. You have got to do the opposite of everything he was doing. Everything he was doing was making the post office lose more money.
▶ 1:56:25Chair Paul: And you are constrained, but outsourcing to a company that has to make a profit is one way to save money, and not hiring anybody, and trying to get the employees to do the work. And then ultimately, really, the country needs to address the situation. You could fix her bottom line by going to four days delivery. I think at first people would be upset by that. Some people might be. Some people would be happy that they get less junk mail, frankly. You could still offer six-day delivery if people wanted to pay the service for it.
▶ 1:56:56Chair Paul: Have a fee if you want six-day, and for days is free. Or so called free. All of a sudden, it would change overnight. I know you cannot do that. But when you see the report from the preeminent restructuring firm, whoever that is, they should be addressing that. You can call it controllable and uncontrollable, but it is important for us to see both. Controllable is on you. Uncontrollable is on us.
▶ 1:57:27Chair Paul: I hope that is part of the report. If it is not, I hope you will ask them to make part of their part. I should've quit five minutes ago. Now, I have another member. Nothing personal. Senator blumenthal?
▶ 1:57:44Sen. Blumenthal: Mr. chairman, I did not want to interrupt your eloquent closing by making my entrance before now. Let me ask you first a question which I think applies generally to your performance in the job.
▶ 1:58:02Sen. Blumenthal: Will you commit that when we have specific questions about post offices, about postal, in connecticut or elsewhere, that you will respond within a timely period?
▶ 1:58:20Mr. Steiner: Absolutely, and I hope we have been doing that.
▶ 1:58:26Sen. Blumenthal: I know you've probably been asked about that in the past. I want to ask you about the recent executive order. I'm sure you've been asked about it, and I apologize. I was in a committee meeting. -- judiciary committee meeting. The united states postal service is not an election and ministration agency, is it?
▶ 1:58:50Mr. Steiner: No, absolutely not.
▶ 1:58:55Sen. Blumenthal: And you have no constitutional authority to review ballots or deny postal service to someone mailing in a ballot, do you?
▶ 1:59:04Mr. Steiner: I don't remember my constitutional law class that well.
▶ 1:59:12Sen. Blumenthal: I think you know enough constitutional law to answer this question. The U.S. postal service has no role whatsoever in reviewing balloting or mail-in ballots under current law, does it?
▶ 1:59:28Mr. Steiner: I'm not trying to be obtuse here, but reviewing it -- I'm not sure what you mean by reviewing.
▶ 1:59:40Sen. Blumenthal: The president's executive order says that the postal service should somehow review voter lists and then refused to deliver mail, in effect.
▶ 1:59:49Mr. Steiner: We don't review the voter list. The voter list for us is like a manifest. The state gives us the list of voters that they want ballots to go to. And then they give us the ballots. We match the ballots with the list and we can tell the state, yes, all the ballots that you say are going to the right people are going. Or no, different ballots are going. Maybe you missed some ballots.
▶ 2:00:15Mr. Steiner: It really is trying to help the state make sure that the ballots that they send to the voters actually get there and get to those voters. It is strictly a manifest for us to make sure that the right ballots are going to the right people.
▶ 2:00:34Sen. Blumenthal: And do you have authority to deny delivery of ballots?
▶ 2:00:38Mr. Steiner: Not under the current rules. Our proposed rules would say that if we don't have that manifest that we cannot move the mail.
▶ 2:00:49Sen. Blumenthal: But you are not going to deliver -- you are not going to refuse to deliver ballots to a voter that the states say is registered?
▶ 2:00:58Mr. Steiner: Absolutely not.
▶ 2:01:02Sen. Blumenthal: And you are not going to review the legitimacy of whether someone is properly registered?
▶ 2:01:06Mr. Steiner: No. We deliver mail.
▶ 2:01:12Sen. Blumenthal: What it states say to you, we would just as soon you not do that kind of review?
▶ 2:01:19Mr. Steiner: Do the manifest and the ballots? Under the proposed rule, we would then not deliver that mail.
▶ 2:01:30Sen. Blumenthal: You would refuse to deliver mail if states would further that you not do the matching?
▶ 2:01:34Mr. Steiner: Yeah, if they don't comply with a valid rule -- as you know, the proposed rules, they are not final rules. We have a comment period we are looking at. Under the proposed rules, that would be correct.
▶ 2:01:49Sen. Blumenthal: Do you agree with the proposed rule?
▶ 2:01:51Mr. Steiner: But I think is that we need to be efficient and accurate in moving ballots. When you look at what we have suggested to states now for years and years and years and years, it is exactly this rule. If you look at it, whether it is connecticut, michigan, california, we have something we call kit 600. We have a lot of people that educate your folks in the state as to how to do it.
▶ 2:02:21Mr. Steiner: The kit 600 recommends unique barcodes.
▶ 2:02:26Sen. Blumenthal: If the state of connecticut says to you we want you to deliver mail-in ballots without conducting your purported supposed so-called review, which is unconstitutional, you will deliver the mail to connecticut voters. Is that correct?
▶ 2:02:47Mr. Steiner: I'm confused. Under the proposed rule or under current rules question mark Sen.
▶ 2:02:55Blumenthal: Under the constitution of the united states, you have an obligation. You run the postal service. You deliver the mail. You don't review ballots. Nobody said you should. The founding fathers did not envision that kind of review. This proposed rule is bogus and I want your commitment that you will deliver the mail, including mail-in ballots, to connecticut voters, without conducting this bogus sham review.
▶ 2:03:20Mr. Steiner: We will deliver every piece of meal -- piece of mail that meets our them-current regulation.
▶ 2:03:29Sen. Blumenthal: Your regulations should not include a review or second-guessing the state one who its electors are, correct?
▶ 2:03:38Mr. Steiner: Our proposed rule is, as you know, subject to litigation. We will see.
▶ 2:03:46Sen. Blumenthal: We will see, but it will probably be in court. Thank you, Mr. chairman.
▶ 2:03:50Chair Paul: I would like to thank Mr. steiner for joining us today. The record for this hearing will remain open until 5:00 p.m. On friday, june 26, 2026, for the submission of statements and questions for the record. The hearing is now adjourned.