USPS strikes deal with Elon Musks DOGE team for reform help

U.S.Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told Congress he signed an agreement with Elon Musk’s DOGE government reform team to provide assistance to the money-losing agency as it works to address “big problems.”USPS, an independent government agency with 635,000 employees that lost $9.5 billion last year, has been exempt from DOGE-directed federal employee reductions.

DeJoy told Congress in a letter seen by Reuters that USPS plans to reduce its workforce by 10,000 workers in the next month through a voluntary early retirement program first announced in January.The Post Office has cut 30,000 jobs since 2021.DeJoy said the agreement with DOGE and the General Services Administration will allow the government reform team to “assist us in identifying and achieving further efficiencies….

The DOGE team was gracious enough to ask for big problems they can help us with.”DOGE is working across government to cancel contracts and shrink agencies.DeJoy cited a number of issues including management of retirement assets and its workers’ compensation program by other government agencies, unfunded mandates and burdensome regulatory requirements.DeJoy has led a dramatic effort to restructure the post office over the last five years — including cutting forecasted losses from $160 billion to $80 billion over a decade– that has used similar tactics to the DOGE team including shrinking the workforce and canceling or renegotiating contracts.He said the Postal Regulatory Commission “is an unnecessary agency that has inflicted over $50 billion in damage to the Postal Service by administering defective pricing models and decades-old bureaucratic processes.”Representative Gerald Connolly, top Democrat on the committee overseeing USPS, said DeJoy was allowing DOGE to “infiltrate” the agency, suggesting DOGE would “undermine it, privatize it, and then profit off Americans’ loss.”GSA and DOGE did not immediately comment.Last month, two media outlets reported Preside...