Editor,

Friday morning, the Homeland Security committee hearing, led by Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, in his very friendly and apologetic treatment of Postmaster General DeJoy, seemed to imply that all the new problems of the post office are being caused by the Democrats, ala Trump.

It has been discovered that Mnuchin had secret meetings with the USPS board members — several conveniently appointed by Trump — before DeJoy’s appointment, also at the behest of Trump.

It seems curious that COVID-19 did not slow down the mail significantly prior to DeJoy’s installation, but that is his excuse, not his new policies.

Interestingly the post office ran very well until the entrance of DeJoy several months ago. Now, suddenly, there are all kinds of problem, mail not getting out on the day of arrival, packages sitting for days. A chart shown at the hearing, revealed a sharp decline in mail delivery coinciding with DeJoy’s arrival.

The Republicans’ solution — have mail delivered twice a week or have patrons pay extra if they live in rural areas down country roads or cut employees, these brilliant ideas provided by Rand Paul.

What they fail to grasp is that the post office is a service, and a good one, not a Fortune 500 company whose bottom line is profit.

DeJoy also informed the committee that boxes removed or high-speed decommissioned sorters will not be coming back.

It seems interesting to me that someone with no post office experience could make all these far-reaching decisions without some study or employee input.

The other problem revealed, and DeJoy seemed obsessed with, was that “trucks leave on time” even if empty because there were no workers to load them. How is that efficient? You can’t turn workers into robots just for a schedule.

Seems like the post office has been doing an admirable job for 245 years, and I for one wish they would not make changes before they study the effect it may have on all of us and our very important vote in November.

Nancy Mayer

Freeland