House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spoke to reporters Saturday before lawmakers voted on a bill to provide the U.S. Postal Service with $25 billion in additional funding.
Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg NewsThe Democratic-led House on Saturday passed legislation preventing U.S. Postal Service cutbacks at least through January and providing it with $25 billion in additional funding, reflecting Democrats’ concerns that delivery delays affecting basic mail service would spill over into an election being held during the coronavirus pandemic.
In a rare Saturday session held during August recess, the bill passed 257-150, with the support of 231 Democrats and 26 Republicans. It was opposed by 149 Republicans and one Independent. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) brought the measure to the floor over the objections of House Republican leaders. They say she is promoting conspiracy theories that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major Trump donor appointed to the position in May, is cutting costs at the financially struggling service to hinder voting by mail, which President Trump has criticized.
Republicans say it is routine to decommission mail-sorting equipment and remove mail drop-boxes that the Postal Service deems underused. They also say the Postal Service has the money and capacity to handle the heavy volume of mail-in ballots expected. They note that Mr. DeJoy has agreed to suspend operational changes until after the general election, which is less than three months away.
The House bill faces opposition as a stand-alone bill in the GOP-controlled Senate. Congressional leaders had been discussing funding for the Postal Service as part of a broader coronavirus relief package, but those negotiations collapsed earlier this month. Mrs. Pelosi said she brought the postal funding bill up separately to address the public alarm over changes implemented by Mr. DeJoy.
“It makes absolutely no sense to implement these dramatic changes in the middle of a pandemic less than three months before the November elections,” House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney (D., N.Y.), the bill’s lead sponsor, said on the House floor Saturday. “The American people do not want anyone messing with the post office. They certainly do not want it to be politicized. They just want their mail.”
Complaints about delays have spilled over into concerns about the election, in which mail-in voting is expected to hit historic highs because of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Representatives of the Post Office have repeatedly stated that they DO NOT NEED MONEY, and will not make changes,” Mr. Trump said Saturday on Twitter. “This is all another HOAX by the Democrats to give 25 Billion unneeded dollars for political purposes, without talking about the Universal Mail-In Ballot Scam that they are trying to pull off in violation of everything that our Country stands for.”
Mr. DeJoy has declined to reverse some changes he has made since becoming the top postal official, including removing mail drop-boxes and taking mail-sorting machines out of service—cuts that Democrats would reverse in their legislation and ban into next year. The House bill also would require all election mail to be treated as first-class mail.
‘We will deploy processes and procedures that advance any election mail, in some cases ahead of first-class mail,’ Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told a Senate committee Friday.
Photo: Richard B. Levine/Zuma PressSenate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) said Saturday he would not bring up a separate Postal Service funding bill without a broader deal on coronavirus relief.
“Senate Republicans are committed to making sure the Postal Service remains well equipped to fulfill its important duties. But the President has already made it clear he will not sign the Speaker’s partisan stunt into law,” Mr. McConnell said in a statement Saturday. “The Senate will absolutely not pass stand-alone legislation for the Postal Service while American families continue to go without more relief.”
Many of the Republicans who voted for the bill on Saturday face competitive re-elections and want to show support for the Postal Service.
“As the Congress, we need to do everything we can to ensure prompt, reliable and efficient postal services during the Covid-19 health emergency and block actions that would impede those efforts,” said Rep. Fred Upton (R., Mich.), who voted for the bill. Even if the Senate doesn’t take it up, “I do think it sends a signal that this legislation should be part of any bipartisan future Covid-19 relief package.”
The bill’s passage was a unifying exercise for the House Democratic caucus. Democrats are torn over Mrs. Pelosi’s strategy for enacting a large new coronavirus-aid package, which has become more urgent for jobless Americans after a $600-a-week federal unemployment supplement expired last month. Senate Republicans and the White House balked at extending it at that level.
The House speaker this week rejected calls by a group of more than 100 Democrats to also vote Saturday on a separate measure to automatically provide a federal unemployment subsidy when the jobless rate is high, arguing that it was tactically unsound to separate that aspect from her efforts to secure a broader aid package.
White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who was on Capitol Hill talking to lawmakers Saturday, also urged Mrs. Pelosi to take up some Covid-relief items where the two parties are closer together.
“If we want to do something on postal, we ought to do something on other small businesses and enhanced unemployment—at least pick the things that we think we can agree upon and put that bill on the floor,” Mr. Meadows told reporters.
Mrs. Pelosi said Saturday she didn’t want to vote on a narrower package of coronavirus relief, a strategy that could leave behind some issues where Democrats and Republicans remain far apart, including funding for state and local governments.
“I’m not for splitting it up, except this is an emergency,” Mrs. Pelosi said of the Postal Service bill, noting that Mr. Meadows had omitted other Democratic priorities, including additional funding for health, education or food stamps.
House Democrats have been willing to give Mrs. Pelosi wide latitude in conducting negotiations because she has steered her caucus to political and policy wins during the Trump presidency, lawmakers and aides said.
“One of the great things about Nancy Pelosi is she is not going to do stupid things out of desperation. She just doesn’t operate like that,” said Rep. Andy Levin, a freshman Democrat from Michigan.
But some Democrats, especially those from districts that Mr. Trump won or that were previously held by a Republican, are growing anxious about an impasse that has stretched out for at least a month.
“Personally, I feel frustrated; I know there’s a lot of frustration among the freshmen class, a lot of us would like to see something done,“ said Rep. Susan Wild (D., Pa.), a freshman who flipped a GOP-held seat. ”The timing is awful because of course we’re heading into full-blown election season. There’s probably less of a tendency to get things done in an election year.”
Hoping to push their leaders to revive talks with White House officials, some Democrats have begun floating ideas to shave down the cost of the $3.5 trillion relief bill passed by the House in May, such as by trimming some of the state and local aid and other provisions. Democratic negotiators have already proposed cutting $1 trillion from the House package, largely by reducing the duration of aid.
“I’d be all for putting a bill on the table that demonstrates our ability to reach that compromise,” said Rep. Tom Malinowski (D., N.J.), who is from a district that was previously held by a Republican.
Write to Kristina Peterson at kristina.peterson@wsj.com and Siobhan Hughes at siobhan.hughes@wsj.com
Corrections & Amplifications
The House seat of Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski was previously held by a Republican. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said President Trump had won that district.
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