WASHINGTON -- Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday that she is calling the House back into session this week to vote on a bill prohibiting the U.S. Postal Service from implementing any changes to operations or level of service.
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The House previously was scheduled to return in September.
The call comes as Democrats warn that changes implemented by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy could wreak havoc during the election in which a record number of people are likely to vote by mail because of concerns about the coronavirus pandemic.
The House Oversight Committee will hold an emergency hearing on mail delays and concerns about potential White House interference in the Postal Service, inviting DeJoy and Postal Service board of governors Chairman Robert Duncan to testify Aug. 24, top Democrats announced Sunday.
The agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment about whether the two men would appear before the House committee.
With heightened scrutiny of its operations, the Postal Service is now requesting a temporary preelection rate increase, from mid-October through Christmas, although not for first-class letters.
Democrats also warn that slowed postal delivery is delaying prescription medicines mailed to veterans and Social Security checks for the elderly.
"Alarmingly, across the nation, we see the devastating effects of the president's campaign to sabotage the election by manipulating the Postal Service to disenfranchise voters," Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a letter to colleagues.
She warned that the "lives, livelihoods and the life of our American democracy are under threat."
In a letter to Democratic lawmakers Sunday evening, Pelosi also called on her colleagues to appear at a post office in their district on Tuesday for a coordinated news event. "In a time of a pandemic, the Postal Service is Election Central. Americans should not have to choose between their health and their vote," she wrote.
Pelosi said House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer would soon announce the legislative schedule for the coming week. House Democrats were likely to discuss the schedule on a conference call today and were expected to be in session Saturday, a senior Democratic aide said on condition of anonymity because the plans were private.
'STARTLING REVELATIONS'
Democrats have alleged that DeJoy, a former Republican National Committee chairman, is taking steps that are causing dysfunction in the mail system and could wreak havoc in the presidential election.
Alarm bells went off after the Postal Service warned 46 states last week that it may not be able to deliver their ballots on time for the November election.
"The postmaster general and top Postal Service leadership must answer to the Congress and the American people as to why they are pushing these dangerous new policies that threaten to silence the voices of millions, just months before the election," Pelosi, House Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., said in a statement announcing the hearing.
"Over the past several weeks, there have been startling new revelations about the scope and gravity of operational changes you are implementing at hundreds of postal facilities without consulting adequately with Congress, the Postal Regulatory Commission, or the Board of Governors," Maloney wrote to DeJoy.
The Postal Service is beset with delays because of policy changes implemented by DeJoy, a former logistics executive. DeJoy banned postal workers from making extra trips to ensure on-time mail delivery and cracked down on overtime hours. Localities across the country have struggled with postal service backlogs of up to a week.
The service is in the process of removing 671 high-speed mail-sorting machines nationwide this month, a process that will eliminate 21.4 million items per hour worth of processing capability from the agency's inventory.
On Thursday and Friday, the Postal Service began removing public collection boxes in parts of California, New York, Pennsylvania, Oregon and Montana, which it said was routine.
But the agency said Sunday that it would stop removing its distinctive blue mailboxes through mid-November after complaints from customers and members of Congress that the collection boxes were being taken away.
"Given the recent customer concerns the Postal Service will postpone removing boxes for a period of 90 days while we evaluate our customers' concerns," said Postal Service spokeswoman Kimberly Frum.
WHITE HOUSE ASSURES
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said on CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday that the Postal Service would also halt sorting-machine removals.
Meadows said the White House is open to Congress passing a stand-alone measure to ensure the Postal Service is adequately funded to manage a surge in mail voting in November.
"The president of the United States is not going to interfere with anybody casting their votes in a legitimate way, whether it's the Post Office or anything else," he said.
Both statements would appear to step back from the president's comments Thursday when he indicated he opposed Postal Service funding because he wanted to restrict expanding voting by mail.
Meadows insisted the president is only opposed to states sending ballots directly to all registered voters -- not to a more common practice in which states send mail ballots only to registered voters who request them.
"The president doesn't have a problem with anybody voting by mail if you would look at it in terms of a no-excuse absentee ballot," Meadows said. "What he opposes is universal mail-in ballots."
There are five states that voted nearly entirely by mail before the pandemic and four more that have announced plans to do so since the pandemic hit. Meadows suggested more states will attempt to shift to sending ballots directly to all registered voters between now and the election.
"This is more about states trying to re-create how they get their ballots and they're trying to do it on a compressed timeline that won't work," he said.
Trump said last week that he was blocking a $25 billion emergency injection sought by the Postal Service, as well as a Democratic proposal to provide $3.6 billion in additional election money to the states.
However on Saturday, Trump said he supports increasing money for the Postal Service. He said he was refusing to capitulate to Democrats on other parts of the latest coronavirus relief package, including funding for states weighed down by debt accumulated before the pandemic.
TRUMP RESPONDS
But the president's critics were not appeased.
"What you are witnessing is a president of the United States who is doing everything he can to suppress the vote, make it harder for people to engage in mail-in balloting at a time when people will be putting their lives on the line by having to go out to a polling station and vote," said Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
Trump, who spent the weekend at his New Jersey golf club, derided universal mail-in voting as a "scam" and defended DeJoy as the right person to "streamline the post office and make it great again."
"Louis he is working very hard," Trump said at a news conference Saturday. "But as you know, the Democrats aren't approving proper funding for postal, and they're not approving the proper funding for this ridiculous thing they want to do which is all mail-in voting."
Calls had grown in recent days from within the Democratic caucus for Pelosi and Maloney to get more aggressive on postal oversight.
The committee last month scheduled a meeting with DeJoy on Sept. 17, but Democrats began privately voicing displeasure last week to leadership that as the postmaster general continued making changes in mail delivery, they would not have an opportunity to cross-examine him for another month.
"What concerns me is an all-out attack -- they're not even hiding it -- by the president of the United States to undermine the United States Postal Service, to underfund it, to allow a mega-donor leading it to overtly do things to slow down the mail," said Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J.
Sanders was on NBC's "Meet the Press," while Meadows and Booker appeared on CNN's "State of the Union."
'PLAN YOUR VOTE'
Former President Barack Obama said Friday that Trump was "actively kneecaping the Postal Service" to suppress the vote. Jeh Johnson, Obama's Homeland Security secretary, said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that given the pandemic and the confusion over mail-in ballots, "the message to the American public has to be, 'Plan your vote.'"
"Think early about how you're going to vote. As soon as you get a ballot, return it in the mail," Johnson said.
Meadows termed it "NONSENSE" that Trump is attempting to undercut the Postal Service.
"I oversaw USPS in Congress on the Oversight Committee. It was a mismanaged wreck during the Obama administration--they've lost billions for a decade had issues long before this President," Meadows said Sunday on Twitter.
The Postal Service rate increase plan would raise prices on commercial domestic competitive parcels, including Priority Mail Express, Priority Mail, first-class package Service, Parcel Select and Parcel Return Service. No change is expected for first-class letters.
Most of the proposed increases would be less than 10%. They range from 24 cents for Parcel Select Service, which starts at $3.05, to a $1.50 increase for Priority Mail Express Commercial, which starts at $22.75. The regulatory commission is expected to decide on the proposals next month.
Information for this article was contributed by Jacob Bogage and Joseph Marks of The Washington Post; by Aamer Madhani and Matthew Daly of The Associated Press; and by Steven T. Dennis and Billy House of Bloomberg News.
