Bernie Sanders: House should come back to fund U.S. Postal Service

Sen. Bernard Sanders of Vermont on Sunday said the House should return from its summer vacation to provide funding for the post office.

“Well, I think Nancy Pelosi has a good idea,” Mr. Sanders, Vermont Independent, said on ABC’s “This Week.” “I think the House should come back and make sure that the U.S. Postal Service is fully funded.”

Mrs. Pelosi and other top Democrats are weighing whether to call their members back to Washington, D.C. to address the U.S. Postal Service.

Mr. Sanders said “we’ve got to do everything we can” to get rid of U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy.

Mr. DeJoy has acknowledged that recent policy changes at the post office have affected service levels.

Democrats have sounded the alarm ahead of a November election that could break records for voting by mail due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“I am deeply, deeply concerned about Trump’s effort to undermine American democracy by defunding the Postal Service,” Mr. Sanders said. “Now that’s not me talking, that’s what Donald Trump said himself a few days ago. He said, look, I don’t want people — millions of people to be casting mail-in ballots.”

Mr. Trump said last week that Democrats were standing in the way of providing additional funding for the postal service and that without the additional money, a massive, near-universal vote-by-mail system wouldn’t work for the November election.

House Democrats included $25 billion for the post office and $3.6 billion in election funding in the nearly $3.5 trillion coronavirus relief package they passed in May.

Congressional Democrats and White House negotiators appeared to settle on $10 billion for the post office in their most recent round of negotiating.

But they couldn’t strike a deal and Congress effectively skipped town until after Labor Day.