Louis DeJoy is letting DOGE into the Postal Service.
On Thursday, the Postmaster Normal informed congressional leaders that he signed an settlement with Elon Musk’s cost-cutting operation, permitting it to assist the USPS get monetary savings and take away bureaucratic bottlenecks, in accordance with a replica of the letter obtained by TIME. “That is an effort aligned with our efforts,” DeJoy wrote, “as whereas now we have completed an important deal, there’s far more to be accomplished.”
However America’s most beloved and beleaguered authorities company received’t be topic to the identical hostile takeover as different federal departments. The Trump Administration has spared the Postal Service, an unbiased physique that funds itself and has roughly 640,000 workers, from DOGE-inflicted strain to shrink its workforce.
As a substitute, DeJoy primarily sicced the Division of Authorities Effectivity on Congress. He assigned Musk’s adjutants to overview what he describes as structural issues created by laws handed within the Nineteen Seventies. Referring to the Postal Reorganization Act, DeJoy stated the company’s retirement property and staff compensation program have been “mismanaged” by different federal departments. He cited unfunded mandates imposed on the USPS that price between $6 billion and $11 billion yearly, similar to providing six-day mail supply and sustaining put up workplaces in distant areas. Maybe most controversially, he known as the Postal Regulatory Fee, which oversees the Postal Service and approves value will increase, an “pointless company” that has misplaced the company greater than $50 billion.
“The DOGE crew was gracious sufficient to ask for the massive issues that they might help us with,” DeJoy wrote to legislators.
There’s a sure irony to the DeJoy-DOGE association. Since taking the helm in 2020, DeJoy has launched into a 10-year plan to make the company worthwhile and extra environment friendly. He renegotiated contracts for air and floor transportation, saving the USPS $10 billion yearly. He lowered the headquarters workforce by 20 p.c, saving greater than $200 million yearly. He constructed new processing facilities and centralized the supply community. On Capitol Hill, he collaborated with Democrats and Republicans to rescind a 2006 legislation that required the USPS to pre-pay the following 50 years of well being and retirement advantages for all of its workers—a rule that no different federal company was pressured to observe. These adjustments led to the Postal Service making a $144 million revenue within the closing quarter of 2024, its first worthwhile interval in years. Since then, he has accomplished extra to trim the USPS finances. By a voluntary early retirement program launched in January, the company is anticipated to shed 10,000 staff subsequent month.
In different phrases: DeJoy has been doing the purported work of DOGE earlier than DOGE got here round.
It hasn’t all been clean crusing. The Postal Service nonetheless lags with on-time supply and assembly its personal service requirements. DeJoy stays a controversial determine on either side of the aisle; in December, he coated his ears throughout a Home Oversight Committee listening to when a Republican member criticized his management of the company.
Learn extra: Louis DeJoy’s Stunning Second Act
Whereas DeJoy as soon as predicted the USPS would break even by 2023, it misplaced $9.5 billion final yr. Postal Service leaders argue they’re solely midway by way of a ten-year plan. DeJoy’s transformations, they are saying, have put the company on a path towards profitability, beating out FedEx and UPS, and preserving its potential to succeed in each American in each nook of the nation.
However DeJoy received’t be overseeing the hassle for much longer. Final month, he informed the USPS Board of Governors to begin in search of a successor, ending a five-year tenure working the company by way of the COVID-19 pandemic, three elections that relied closely on mail voting, and the implementation of a dramatic restructuring.
It’s not clear what is going to come subsequent for one of many solely authorities companies enshrined within the Structure. President Donald Trump has floated proposals similar to privatization and folding the USPS into the Commerce Division. Musk, for his half, has additionally known as for privatizing the Put up Workplace. “I feel logically we must always privatize something that may fairly be privatized,” he informed a convention this month.
That continues to be unlikely. Both of these strikes would require congressional authorization, and there’s no indication that majorities in both chamber would assist that type of disruption to a preferred authorities company that delivers to greater than 167 million addresses day by day.
A collaboration between DeJoy and DOGE may supply another. As a logistics professional and main Trump donor earlier than changing into Postmaster Normal, DeJoy has credibility with the Musk-led initiative that others don’t. Moderately than work towards them, he’s working with them. The endgame could also be to persuade Congress to avoid wasting the USPS from alternate options that the majority would fairly keep away from.
“Fixing a damaged group that had skilled near $100 billion in losses and was projected to lose one other $200 billion, and not using a chapter continuing, is a frightening process,” DeJoy wrote to lawmakers. “Fixing a closely legislated and overly regulated group as large, vital, cherished, misunderstood, and debated as the US Postal Service, with such a damaged enterprise mannequin, is much more troublesome.”
