WASHINGTON — Below is the oral statement prepared for delivery by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy before the hearing by the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability on Dec. 10, 2024.

Good morning, Chairman Comer, Ranking Member Raskin, and Members of the Committee. I appreciate the opportunity to once again discuss the significant progress the U.S. Postal Service is making in accomplishing the objectives identified in the Delivering for America plan.

When I agreed to take on the role as Postmaster General, the nation was in the beginning of a pandemic and the Postal Service was in an organizational crisis, facing a diverse array of challenges that put the organization on an accelerating and near-term trajectory to financial and service collapse.

The Postal Service had lost almost $90 billion, was projected to lose another $200 billion over the next 10 years and was about to run out of cash before the year end.

Over 31,000 facilities were in shockingly horrible condition with over $20 billion in deferred maintenance and were ill-equipped for modern-day tasks.

We had not met our service standards in almost 10 years and had not reduced work hours in over eight years, despite significantly reduced volume.

More explicitly, over 57 percent of our 31,000 Post Offices did not cover the costs of the people that worked at them, and 76 percent of our 235,000 delivery routes lost money.

This all came to a crushing blow in the peak holiday season of 2020, three and a half months into my tenure, when we were overwhelmed, and dramatically impacted service throughout the nation for many months. Service scores across the board sank into 70’s for an extended period of time.

We were a dysfunctional organization, with poor operational processes and discipline, declining product volumes and alarming employment practices. We were void of strategy, vision and resources. Yet as with today, we were high on demands, regulation, critique and resistance to change.

Oddly enough, there wasn’t a plan in sight at that particular point and time, anywhere from anyone, to address the issues. Even though it was going on for over a decade.

Within four months of my tenure, we produced the Delivering for America plan. A plan that called for the men and women of the United States Postal Service to raise the organization up from near death and pursue operational, financial and service excellence.

And we have been executing on that plan since – through extraordinary times.

The 10-year DFA plan had five simple aspirational and directional objectives we planned to accomplish. The plan was developed in consideration of the laws and regulations that governed the Postal Service at the time, not the ones we think that should have governed it. The plan also considered the failing condition and trajectory of the organization, as well as its revenue losses and opportunities at the time of the release of the plan in March of 2021.

Finally, the plan, when developed and as it is being implemented, considered the relevant attributes of our evolving economy, geography, public policy, marketplace and competitive landscape as we knew it.

The plans five objectives were focused on the following:

• Objective Number 1: Improving our operational precision and organizational effectiveness — we have. After much reorganization and sweeping operational infrastructure initiatives, we have made great gains towards replicating throughout the Postal Service the ingenuity and competitive spirit of the best in private companies in America. The changing culture, combined with our commitment to public service, will serve us well into the future.

• Objective Number 2: Reducing our cost of performance — we have. Reversing our loss trajectory by reducing 45 million annual workhours (approximately $2.5 billion) and transportation costs of over $1.5 billion annually, thus reaching the self-help cost take out goals of $30 billion over the 10-year period identified in the plan.

• Objective Number 3: Creating reliable and affordable service – we have. By September of 2023, service for most product categories reached 93 percent on time and we’re well in reach of our stated targets of 95 percent. And we still had some of the lowest postage rates in the world. However, the cost to achieve this under the existing infrastructure and service was not sustainable.

• Objective Number 4: Growing our revenue and margin on our products — we have. Revenue growth has exceeded our plan by over $24 billion with significant gains in competitive products dramatically outpacing the projections in the DFA plan.

• Objective Number 5: Creating inspired, productive and long-term career paths for our employees — we have. By reversing unfavorable practices with our pre-career workforce, improving our working conditions, and liberating and inspiring the managerial workforce to collaborate and simply do better.

In addition to all these initiatives and accomplishments, there was another goal of which you are aware, Mr. Chair. Under your leadership, and with former Chair Carolyn Maloney, as well as Chairman Peters and former Ranking Member Portman in the Senate, we worked very collaboratively on the passage of the Postal Service Reform Act, which among other things removed the unfair burden of prepayments required and enabled the integration of our retiree health care benefits with the Medicare system. I again thank you and the Congress, for your efforts in this important legislation.

After three years, we are a different organization today. We have initiated reforms in nearly every aspect of the Postal Service, including operations, maintenance, logistics, procurement, sales, marketing, technology, products, government relations, communications and personnel management.

We have repurposed approximately 200 facilities, deployed $2.5 billion towards deferred maintenance, hired or repositioned almost 1 million people, relocated or installed over 1000 conveyor systems, transitioned one of the world’s largest air cargo networks, packaged and delivered over 1 billion Covid Test Kits, and introduced a new multi-billion-dollar product.

We did all this while delivering 400 million pieces of mail daily, six days a week to 167 million addresses spread across half the planet under rules, regulations and processes designed by bureaucrats of the 1970’s for a different social and economic America.

I am proud of the work we have accomplished and am impressed by the commitment, talent and tenacity of our people as they work hard to make the Postal Service the best in commerce and public service for many years to come – a unique opportunity we have – and as the Congress intended when they created us.

What we haven’t done Mr. Chair is break-even. The planned initiatives accomplished did not overcome the rescue and recovery of our operations, the 20 percent inflation we experienced, as well as the dramatic rise in our mis-managed Federal Government retirement costs and other compensation benefits. About 90 percent of our 2023 loss of $6.5 billion was due to substantial unplanned, unable to be forecasted increases in our costs in these areas.

Nevertheless, under these conditions we still reduced our projected 10-year losses of approximately $200 billion to slightly under $80 billion. 

We are now taking additional aggressive actions to further reduce our operating cost by $5 billion annually and grow our revenue an additional $3 billion annually as identified in my letter to the President and Congressional Leadership on January 10, 2024.

These initiatives are aligned with the requirements spelled out in the Postal Reform Act to deliver mail and packages six days a week through an integrated network.

This requires the continued realignment and equipping of over 31,000 facilities, the re-routing of over 50,000 truckloads a day, the effective utilization of over 200 aircraft routes a day and inspiring and changing the operational and organizational culture of over 600,000 postal employes. I am confident in our ability to accomplish all of this.

It will also require changes to our service standards and business rules, to reflect the modern-day use of the Postal Service, and continue to liberate us from the reckless demands and regulations, and mindset, that has destroyed this organization over the past 19 years.

The American people mailed 59 billion pieces of First-Class Mail in 1999. Last year, they mailed less than 12 billion. It is time for us to solve for the obvious. And that is what we propose to do with our recent filing for an Advisory Opinion with the Postal Regulatory Commission.

Since September of 2023, when our service was in the 90’s, the rapid changes we have had to make have not come without consequence in some areas of the nation, and we apologize to those impacted. This is the consequence of decades of neglect and inaction. The lift we have is high, and the time we have is little. So, we will carry on with caution, but we will carry on.

Having said that, throughout the coming year we continue to deliver more than 50 percent of the mail and packages we handle each day in advance of the current service standard. We estimate we will deliver 85 percent on the day of the service requirement, and 95 percent will be delivered within one day of the service requirement. On average, the American public will receive their mail and packages within 2.7 days.

As you know, the basic mission of the Postal Service — and our fundamental statutory obligation — is to provide high quality postal services in a financially sustainable manner. 

Under this structure, it is my job not to just deliver the mail tomorrow, but to transform the Postal Service into an organization that can provide quality postal services in a financially sustainable manner for years to come. We are working feverishly to correct for the past, overcome the economic, political and completive hurdles, we face today, and yes, correct for our own missteps as we engage this massive task.

I ask that you keep in mind that there is no way to fix service and our finances under our current regulatory business model without dramatic changes to our operations and approach. And I would like to remind the committee, that I was not appointed by President Trump, I was appointed by a bipartisan board of governors. Thank you.

This statement is also available on our Statements page.

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