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Norton Speaks on House Floor for Funds for the Postal Service and about the Crisis Precipitated by the Postmaster General

August 22, 2020

WASHINGTON, D.C. — In speaking on the House floor today in favor of a bill to restore postal services and to provide $25 billion to help the U.S. Postal Service survive, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) reminded Americans that "the pandemic had not kept the mail from being faithfully delivered" until Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was appointed.

Norton's speech on the House floor concluded a busy week working to save the Postal Service. On Tuesday, she spoke at a press conference alongside House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House and Senate members of the

D.C. regional delegation about postal issues. On Thursday, she held a press conference at a post office in the District of Columbia, where she heard from postal workers and residents about their experience with mail delivery.

Norton's remarks on the House floor today follow:

Mr. Speaker, even during this pandemic with most agencies down, we had not heard complaints from the Postal Service until Louis Dejoy was appointed Postmaster General. On the contrary, the pandemic had not kept our mail from being faithfully delivered.

Almost immediately after Dejoy assumed office, pandemonium broke out. For example, in Ward 8 of my district, there was no mail for two weeks. And the District and 46 states have been warned by the Postal Service itself that it cannot guarantee that all mail ballots will arrive in time to be counted.

Mr. Dejoy did not tell the truth at the Senate hearing yesterday. We know from a July 15 memorandum directing employees explicitly to leave mail behind and to significantly cut overtime. We know that from an August 7 Postal Service action that reassigned 23 top executives with decades of institutional knowledge of postal operations in order to centralize operations in Mr. Dejoy. We know and will bring out, before the hearing is over today that the Post Office continues to be sabotaged.

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