Senator Baldwin, DNC prime time speaker, says post office actions cause ‘real harm’

Wisconsin’s junior senator will find herself in the national spotlight Thursday as a prime-time speaker before Joe Biden accepts the party’s nomination for president on the final night of the Democratic National Convention.

“I will touch on the themes of the last three days and pose a question of what kind of country we want to be,” Baldwin told WTMJ’s Steve Scaffidi. “Of course, given my own passion in politics, I’ll talk about health care.”

Baldwin also shared what she said was the result of United States Postal Service Postmaster Louis DeJoy’s recent order to dismantle processing machines and close drop-off locations in advance of absentee ballots being cast in the presidential election.

“We started getting calls from constituents about delays,” said Baldwin. “A lot of the steps (DeJoy) had been taking in a non-transparent way were harming efficiency and weren’t saving money. This idea of dismantling high-speed sorting equipment doesn’t save the Post Office money. It seems to be sabotaging the Post Office.”

Baldwin says that alleged sabotaging is hurting people in need of paychecks and prescriptions, who get those and other necessary things through the U.S. Mail.

“My constituents are suffering because of the things the new postmaster is doing. These are issues,” explained Baldwin. “This causes real harm. We’ve got to reverse that.”

Did President Trump order DeJoy to take those actions? Baldwin says answers could come soon.

“I think we’ll find out a lot when the Postmaster testifies (before House and Senate committees). The Inspector General is doing an investigation,” she said.

Baldwin stated that the fiscal issues with the USPS partially involve a lack of congressional action.

“The sad part of it is that Congress has been part of the problem. There has been long-standing efforts to pass a postal reform bill, starting before I even was elected to the U.S. Senate. Each time, it seems to stall,” Baldwin said.

“Part of the reason for the pending insolvency of the U.S. Postal Service was an onerous condition placed by Congress…to prefund retirement and health care. There’s nothing wrong with prefunding, but the way in which it was set up had expectations of the Post Office that went well beyond what any other government agency is expected to do, and way beyond what any private sector (business) is expected to do.”