The United States Postal Service (USPS) is teaming up with Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to implement massive reforms aimed at cutting waste, increasing efficiency, and saving taxpayer dollars.
For years, the USPS has been a bloated, inefficient, money-losing government entity, weighed down by excessive regulations and union-driven inefficiencies.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy penned a letter to congressional leaders outlining just how broken the USPS has been for decades—racking up nearly $100 billion in losses and projected to lose another $200 billion if left unchecked.
“It has long been known that the Postal Service has a broken business model that was not financially sustainable without critically necessary and fundamental core change. Fixing a broken organization that had experienced close to $100 billion in losses and was projected to lose another $200 billion, without a bankruptcy proceeding, is a daunting task.
“Fixing a heavily legislated and overly regulated organization as massive, important, cherished, misunderstood and debated as the United States Postal Service, with such a broken business model, is even more difficult.”
DeJoy, who has helmed the USPS since 2020, touts his “Delivering for America” (DFA) plan as a miraculous turnaround for the agency.
“We’ve transformed a battered bureaucracy into a lean, mean delivery machine,” he seems to imply, citing $2.2 billion in annual transportation cuts, a 20% slash in headquarters staff (infamously dubbed the “Friday Night Massacre”), and a workforce reduction.
According to DeJoy, the USPS has already reduced 30,000 employees since 2021, saving $2.5 billion in labor costs. There will be an additional 10,000 job cuts in the next 30 days through a Voluntary Early Retirement program.
According to DeJoy’s letter to congressional leaders, he signed an agreement “with the General Services Administration and DOGE representatives to assist us in identifying and achieving further efficiencies.”
More from the letter:
“This is an effort aligned with our efforts, as while we have accomplished a great deal, there is much more to be done. We are happy to have others to assist us in our worthwhile cause. The DOGE team was gracious enough to ask for the big problems they can help us with. Among other initiatives, I provided the following list of items that are in your hands and that have been intractable even though they have needed to be addressed for over a decade. Please review the following:
• The mismanagement of our self-funded retirement assets and the actuarial miscalculations of our retirement obligations. These work functions reside with the Office of Personal Management and the Treasury Department based on legislation enacted by the Congress. They result in several billion dollars a year in burdensome additional charges not common in private industry.
• The mismanagement of our Workers’ Compensation Program resulting in approximately $ 400 million dollars a year in excessive charges when compared to private industry practices. These work functions reside with the Department of Labor and are legislated by the Congress.
• The unfunded mandates imposed on us by legislation. These well-intended laws that have been passed since we were created as a self -funding agency for the most part require the Postal Service to perform costly activities without providing any supporting funding. In the private industry context, this would be like UPS or FedEx providing services to the Federal Government without charging for them. This amount is estimated to cost between $6 billion and $11 billion annually. As you know, Congress is responsible for passing legislation without appropriate funding.
• Our burdensome regulatory requirements restricting normal business practice. 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 that encumber the Postal Service. They have an anachronistic view of the Postal Service’s current business environment, they have failed to change as the times and the postal economy has changed, and they therefore stand in the way of the timely and necessary changes required to succeed as a self-funded enterprise in a competitive environment-which is what the Postal Service needs to do to survive.”
Recall that in December, Louis DeJoy was grilled during a congressional hearing about his failures.
Lawmakers accuse Louis DeJoy of bankrupting the USPS. He covered his ears as representatives blamed him for the postal service’s fall.
Louis DeJoy announced his intention to step down last month and asked the Postal Service Board of Governors to replace him.
“As you know, I have worked tirelessly to lead the 640,000 men and women of the Postal Service in accomplishing an extraordinary transformation,” DeJoy wrote. “We have served the American people through an unprecedented pandemic and through a period of high inflation and sensationalized politics.”
The postmaster general is the second-highest-paid federal employee. According to public records, Dejoy’s reported pay was $341,020 in 2024.