c-span.org/coronavirus. >> "washington journal"

continues. host: joining us this morning's kevin kosar, a scholar at the american enterprise institute in washington. he is here to talk about the future of the u.s. postal service. we will have a third line for postal workers. we want to hear from you. before we get to calls, let's talk about the financial state of the postal service. what is it? guest: it is not good. the agency has been running structural deficits for many years. last year was particularly bad. it swelled up to $83 billion driven by responses to the covid situation. the debt last year was $9 billion. host: why is it in this financial situation? guest: there are a few factors at work. paper mail volume has gone down

40% since the great recession in 2008. for the most part, that is where postal revenues come from. we have seen a surge in the quantity of parcels, but it has not been enough. postal service is an expensive operation to run. it is huge. it covers all of continental america, alaska, hawaii, puerto rico, american samoa. it has a global reach and a huge workforce, mostly unionized. there are somewhere around 640,000 employees. it is expensive to run. with demand for service declining, this is why it has been hitting deficits in recent years. host: what sorts of benefits to postal workers get? guest: they are federal employees. folks mistake the postal service as a public-private partnership.

they are full government employees. they participate in the government health benefit plan. unlike most other federal workers from postal workers are unionized, and they collectively bargain over wages, compensation, and working conditions. host: how does the postal service have to run its budget compared to other agencies? guest: since 1970, it has been designed to be a self funding government entity. it is one of about 18 self funding federal entities. other popular ones are the tennessee valley authority. these are government agencies that don't go to congress every year to get taxpayer dollars to fund their operations. they engage in commercial enterprise that generates the revenue to cover the costs.

the postal service has a lot more operational freedom from congressional oversight and intervention in its day-to-day affairs. host: i want to show our viewers what the president's spokesperson jen psaki had to say when she was asked about confidence in the usps leadership and recent nominees to the board. [video clip] >> yesterday, he nominated three extremely qualified individuals to fill the empty spots on the board of governors, anton hi jar, amber reynolds, and ron instrument. i think we can all agree that most americans would agree that the postal service needs leadership that can and will do a better job. not everybody knows, it is up to

the board of governors, of which we just nominated three individuals to serve, to determine the future of leadership there. we leave it to their discretion. >> sounds like you are signaling the board to take a look at it. >> i think the president is certainly familiar with the process. he thinks the leadership can do better. we are eager to have the board of governors in place. host: what does that say about the future leadership of the future leaders of the postal service? guest: it says to me that they will continue to be a lot of pressure on the postmaster general to joy -- dejoy to improve services, which for the most part declined last year. the postal service did a terrific job of delivering ballots by mail. they had a 99% on-time delivery rate.

there is no indication that the postal service failed in a way that had an impact on the election. delivery time performance has been low. you have a lot of constituents that are upset. people are wondering where boxes are. small businesses are frustrated. they sent things to customers that never got there. it is the job of the board of governors to decide whether the postmaster general is performing adequately. host: what is the future of dejoy? guest: it remains to be seen. the board of governors has six of its nine members. it is chaired by a democrat named rod blum. he has said he has confidence in louis dejoy. confidence is subject to change. it is about performance.

we will have to see how the postal service does over the course of this year. host: what is the postmaster general saying about the strategy going forward? guest: he is saying that a lot of hard choices were put off for many years, that postal service leadership, previous leadership did not fully appreciate the fact that paper mail was going away. this has huge ramifications for the business. the postal service system, trucks, machines, post offices, sorting facilities, they were designed to handle paper mail. when paper mail goes down and is replaced by parcels, that is going to create serious operational challenges. last year, we had that massive surge in parcels hitting the

system because so many people were shopping from home, and the system broke down. louis dejoy thinks change needs to be embraced. paper mail is going to keep fading away and parcels will keep going up. postal services will have to invest in new trucks and facilities. it just has to change itself fundamentally. host: he has put out a 10 year plan, delivering for america. it includes designed to save $167 billion over 10 years, raises prices, cuts air transportation to carry 12% of first class mail, does not include widespread layoffs or closures of local post offices. when you look at the details, what do you think? guest: there is a lot. this thing runs about 60 pages.

it has a breadth of types of reform that he wants to enact. he's looking to save $160 billion over the course of 10 years. he is going to need help from congress to do it. he needs their help to pass a law. that will save $60 billion over 10 years. he is hoping to raise prices to generate $60 billion in additional revenue. he has to be careful because if he raises rates too quickly, he will drive more mail out of the system. he has got a slew of logistical changes. one of them involves a mail piece, when it enters the

system, there is something like 11 different touches in the course of that process. he wants to reduce the number of those touches. he wants to protect the postal service from operational disruptions that come from relying on airplanes. the postal service does not have its own fleet. it contracts with fedex to put mail on planes. that is expensive. if fedex is disrupted by covid or serving other customers, the postal service operation gets disrupted. host: the wall street journal writes, the plan confronts the opposite course is its key businesses have been on for years. annual revenue from first class mail is down since 2007. revenue from packages has nearly tripled with the explosion in

online shopping. neither trend is expected to stop. kevin kosar here to take your questions and comments about the postal service. if you live in the eastern part of the country, (202) 748-8000. mountain and pacific, (202) 748-8001. postal workers, we want to hear from you, (202) 748-8002. let me kick it off with this text from jan in illinois. how many entities other than the u.s. postal service are required to pre-fund retirement benefits 75 years in advance? guest: next to none. i should add the postal service is not required to pre-fund 75 years. that is something that started circulating on the internet not long after 2006. the pre-funding mandate was onerous.

it said the postal service is promising benefits when people retire, and you are only funding some of that. you are not funding retiree health care benefits. you are expecting to be able to reach in your pocket and bear this expense. with huge numbers of postal service workers retiring, the idea was the postal service should pre-fund. the way the plan was drawn up by congress was not good. it was too aggressive and enacted just before the great recession, which caused revenues to go down and created a situation where the postal service after a few years just quit paying into the pre-funding. it has not done any pre-funding since 2012. host: mike in ohio. caller: good morning.

you just got caught in a lie. they did force the postal service to pre-fund their benefits 75 years in advance. this was a concerted effort by the right, including american enterprise institute, the heritage foundation, to destroy the postal service. louis dejoy was put in there to help that by destroying mail sorting devices, what have you. the right cannot stand that this is a unionized workforce, and once it is gone, people will see , as fedex, ups, all these private companies take over, and the people that will get hurt the most are people in rural areas, heavily republican, and when they are told that if you

want your mail, you are going to have to drive 10 miles to pick it up because ups, fedex, and what have you cannot afford, or it is too expensive to deliver the mail at your home, and we are going to get what we wished for here. it is really a shame that a thing that was created by franklin -- excuse me, benjamin franklin, who probably people like you today would consider him a communist by having a government entity to deliver mail. host: i'm going to jump in so we can get a response from kevin kosar. guest: just to be very clear, i do not advocate privatizing the postal service. i have actually advocated strengthening the postal

service. i advocated that access to absentee ballots be increased so that more ballots could travel through the mail, which is more convenient for individuals, which is very secure. as for the postal service, i have been working on capitol hill for 18 years now. i have not seen a single bill that aims to privatize it. the reason is because very few people want to do that. republicans out in rural areas, they don't want to privatize the postal service. they want to ensure the postal service can still deliver well. they depend on the postal service for prescription drugs. i don't know where it is coming from, this idea that there is some sort of right-wing plot to destroy the postal service. it is just not accurate. host: your thoughts on carolyn

maloney, democratic congresswoman from new york, and her proposal to reform the agency. she would like to repeal the pre-funding mandate for future retiree health care and allow postal workers to enroll in medicare. guest: it has been around for years. they have been trying to work out the logistics to it. it is a different way of dealing with the pre-funding issue. i much prefer that to the previous response that democrats had to the pre-funding mandate, which was to abolish it and pretend the postal service does not owe these benefits to their retirees. my own preference is that we continue pre-funding, but we decreased the amount the postal service has to pre-fund each year.

we do as at least one of the postal unions has advocated, allow a portion of the money refunded to be put in index funds, the same weight employees saving for retirement have money put in index funds overseen by a nonpartisan board. if you did that with pre-funding, you could largely solve the pre-funding problem. host: david is a postal worker in maryland. welcome to the conversation. caller: thank you. good morning to you both. i am a retired postal worker. i get real tired of hearing comments from the likes of mr. kosar and the republicans on the right. i cannot remember, is aei bipartisan or conservative or democratic? what is its makeup?

guest: it is nonpartisan. we are a 501(c)(3). we do not hire on the basis of political affiliation. i am a registered independent. it certainly leans to the right. caller: i want to echo the first caller's comments. the dagger in the heart was the proposal to pre-fund health care health benefits for retired postal workers. as it has been said, no other agency and the government, no other company in the united states pre-funds, is obligated to pre-fund their retirement benefits in the form of health care. host: let me go to pete in pennsylvania. caller: i used to work at the

post office. i am retired. if you look at your mail, on the right-hand corner of the letter, you see a lot of business letters are nine cents, $.11, these should be double or triple that. you are spending $.50 to send a letter to california. businesses send these out for nine cents, $.11, and the post office needs revenue, but they are not charging. host: let's take that point. guest: pete raised a very good point. in the past year, the postal regulatory commission, which has authority over the rate system the postal service pass to within, it has released a new system which changes the previous pricing system.

under the previous size some -- previous system, most of what gets mailed, rates could only be raised at the rate of inflation. that rate is going to be increased. louis dejoy and his plan is counting on using that authority. he's looking to bring in $50 billion over the next 10 years in additional revenue through increased rates. host: layla from colorado sends us this text, most of us are going paperless with banking, bills, everything else. the post office needs to get creative. guest: yeah, no, i fully appreciate that perspective. i think a lot of americans look to europe and other nations. they do all sorts of different activities that are non-postal. it has been the american

tradition that the postal service is first and foremost a postal service. at one time the postal service was involved in banking from 1920 to 1970. it got out of that business. the margins got worse, and the competition got more intense. the postal service was not created to be a parcel deliver. now that is a major part of its business. louis dejoy is looking to capture more of that market by making it easier for consumers when they shop online. they should be able to return it through the postal service or easily. host: barbara, manchester, maryland. caller: i have a problem with the post office. i am in my 60's. i am on a limited income. i have always paid all of my bills through the post office. at the beginning of the year, i

found out my bills were not getting paid even though i sent them ahead of time. i ended up with a lot of people calling me saying they had not received their money. i stopped using the post office. i have lost faith in the post office. i don't want to use them anymore. host: what do you do? how do you send your bills? caller: i call on the phone and make a direct payment. that is usually the way i do it now, or i go in and pay. host: kevin kosar. guest: i have heard that complaint many times. last years service plunge, particularly late november and december through january, that was terrible. that cannot happen again. it is going to drive people away from the mail. that is not good for the postal service. host: janet, dayton, ohio.

caller: thanks for taking my call. my biggest issue is the leadership of louis dejoy. how can you take someone seriously that also has a vested interest in his competition? we saw what he did during the election, delaying our mail. he has a vested interest in other package delivery companies. how is that possible? how are you allowed to keep your job and run this post office and have a vested interest in the competition? i don't understand how that works and how that is allowed. guest: there has been at least one previous look at dejoy's financial holdings, whether they are in violation. i understand the u.s. postal service inspector general is looking into additional concerns

raised about that. i anticipate the anxiety it creates. is this guy trying to use this government office to create an improved side hustle or something like that? it is not clear to me exactly how that is happening. he is not the owner of a private company. he is not doing things that cause the postal service to lose business and private company to gain business. the delivering for america proposal he put out, he is explicitly calling for the postal service to grab a larger share of the parcel market from the private sector, which is kind of shocking. host: donald in south bend, indiana, postal worker. caller: i am a letter carrier. i just got back because i had to take my car to the shop. i'm not sure what the gentleman's position is on the post office.

if he is talking about privatization, that is not going to work. the post office does a good job. i know we had some problems this past winter, but that is because some people were out because of the pandemic. we had people that were sick. things are going to get better. there is more weather coming. -- warm weather coming. everybody is working. the postal workers, the letter carriers, they are phenomenal. i'm in awe of them. there are people that have been working straight 30 days, 10 hours a day. forget about privatization. it is not going to happen. it will not work. the post office does the job. we do the job. host: let me ask you what it was like during the pandemic when numbers were high and you were losing your coworkers?

they were out sick because of this. what was it like for others who had to pick up and work those extra hours? caller: it was kind of rough. you get through it. i got to say, the post office came through. i give the post office kudos. they did come through. they gave us stuff we needed to keep ourselves safe. host: are you vaccinated? have you been vaccinated through the postal service? caller: i am getting my second shot tomorrow, and i cannot wait. 6:00 p.m. tomorrow eastern time, and i cannot wait. host: was that organized through the postal service? caller: no, it was done through the state of indiana, which i must admit has done a great job. host: they prioritized you? caller: not really. i waited my turn because i am 59, and i waited my turn. that is ok. there are other people who need

to get the shot who do more, like the nurses, first responders. it is cool. i wear my mask. i wash my hands. i use sanitizer and everything. i'm ok. i'm getting my second shot tomorrow. i just want to say, you know, the postal workers can do it. we can do it. host: thank you for calling in. kevin kosar, what did you hear? guest: one of the underreported facts is that when the covid situation had, more than 120,000 postal workers had to quarantine. their workforce is 640,000. that is a huge number. that is intensely disruptive to operations. the fact that the postal service has been able to keep doing what it is doing is impressive.

when you consider the fact that they got slammed with a record number of parcels last year, you had private companies turning away parcel volume the postal service took on. if you don't have machines designed to sort parcels, that means people have to do it by hand. that is postal workers rolling up their sleeves and doing it. we owe the postal service workers a great deal of thanks. host: kevin kosar, here is a tweet from one of our viewers. "more robotic sorters would expedite delivery. louis dejoy is negligent." is that in the future? guest: one of the plans is to acquire more than 100 new sorting machines designed to handle parcels.

there was a lot of anxiety over the postal service bawling paper sorting machines last year. that anxiety was misplaced for the most part. the postal service is only utilizing those machines something like 50%. paper mail volume has been plunging. the postal service has been saying it by two a lot of the infrastructure it uses to sort paper mail and hello to parcels. host: robert in greenville, north carolina. good morning to you. robert, greenville, north carolina. caller: yes, thank you. sorry. dejoy, he was hired by mark meadows and donald trump, and he

is a criminal. that is who is running the postal service. he is not going to do anything that is going to help the people of the united states of america. we have a running the postal service. host: do you have any thoughts on that? guest: dejoy really has gotten -- slapped upon him since last year. in part this happened because of president trump. yes, the fact that dejoy was a fundraiser for republicans made him an easy target. dejoy was attacking voting by mail, attacking amazon, saying all sorts of things that were factually inaccurate. it created an environment where

any postmaster general comes in, and it is hyper partisan. i have been doing postal politics for 18 years. i have never seen anything like this. i have never seen a postmaster general so demonized. he has got a lot of work to do to break out of that image. we will see if he can get it done. host: you have been looking at the postal service for almost two decades. what have you done in the past? guest: what have i done in the past? jeez. i started my postal career at the library of congress, a nonpartisan research institute. i had a supervisor who asked me to back him up and under study. two years later, he decided to retire. i became the lead postal guy. it was a fascinating area. i found that members of congress, left and right, always

needed help dealing with postal issues because the postal service is that one government agency at the federal level that touches members of the public in their homes and at their businesses five or four days a week. caller: hello hot -- aloha. i had a question. i reported this to police about six years ago. it was from a deceased person. it looked like a collection company, first class express notice, paid dcph. i'm just wondering. i received two of these in my box even after i filed a police complaint. this person has been deceased. they even notified these

creditors. for whatever reason, it looks like just a bunch of letters cm bus6, because we verified this person was deceased, it was addressed to my box. is it legal for me to open the mail to find out who to contact to stop these mailings? guest: i would be hesitant to open it. i would be inclined to take it to my local post office and ask the postmaster at that post office. if that did not get me an answer, i would write return to sender on the envelope and drop it back in the mail. if the male keeps coming, you might consider filing a complaint with the postal

service inspection service. they have people who keep an eye out for fraud and kiddy smut through the mail and all sorts of stuff. host: a text saying this, the postmaster general has a constitutional mandate to build infrastructure. is that true? host: -- guest: under the constitution, congress may create post roads, post offices, but otherwise, there is nothing in the constitution about that. under postal law, the postal service is supposed to run an efficient system of mail delivery. this is why they were given authority to put facilities where they think facility should be as opposed to putting

facilities where members of congress might prefer. host: another message, this one on twitter, "ask mr. gosar what the logic behind forever stamps is. i bought $100 worth, and i will probably leave them to my children." guest: it is a convenience to consumers. you don't have to go back to buy a new stamp to attach to an old stamp. the postal service has your money and doesn't have to give you service until you demanded. it is a cost savings for the postal service. their clerks do not have to sell you three sent stamps. they can sell something with a higher margin. host: welcome to the conversation good caller: i just want to say i recently retired.

the postal office is a good organization. i worked as an electronic technician. the reason you are not getting the mail as fast as you should receive is because they have taken away the machines. the machines are the efficiency of the post office. the post office to you very well. host: what machines are you talking about? caller: barcode sorters, asfs, flat sorting sequencing machines. they sort magazines and so on, large envelopes. they tracked the mail very well. they really do. they have a very technical aspect to the sorting of the mail. when it is finished with the sorting, they go out and deliver.

they do it in sequence. to make it short, the post office is a very good organization. the problem with the post office is basically upper management. there are a lot of people that do not have any fair knowledge of electronics and maintenance. i was in the maintenance division. this is the weakness in the post office. the upper management is the problem. host: kevin kosar, take that point. guest: upper management is something that is targeted in dejoy's plan. he argues the way it is structured right now, you have supervisors who have to brought a range of -- too broad a range of responsibilities. he wants to rearrange things to have things more focused on particular response abilities in the hopes it will lead to better results.

host: bill in florida, question or comment about the postal service? caller: i got questions cards -- christmas cards that were postmarked december 13 that i did not receive until january 20. they want to push my vote through the mail. my vote is too important to be trusted to the post office that has proven recently that they are not as efficient as private industry. that is my comment. host: that was built. i just want to add to what bill was talking about with ballots. granny rich sends us a tweet, once the post office has your ballot, you cannot get it back. if it is not received, it is

gone. how can i trust usps to get it there in time when my utility bills arrive after they are already due? guest: when it comes to ballots in the mail, the postal service gives them extra care and attention. this is why in the past election despite these ballots coming out, despite covid, they were able to deliver 98% of those on time, which is higher than your average mail, or magazine, which is delivered on time something like 70%. caller: i am a retired postal employee. host: go ahead. caller: i would like to know what happened to those machines they took out. i would like somebody to track those. the government gets free mail.

they don't have to pay for it. you attacking the postal service, but you are getting free mail. in some small towns, the only government agency in those small towns are the post office. why are you trying to get rid of the post office? guest: one of the things that surprised me in dejoy's plan, i assumed he would want to cut down the number of post office is by a huge number because most do not bring in enough revenue to cover their costs. instead he is talking about reimagining them as go to destinations for government services. the idea that the postal service can provide things more than postal service is big many of them provide things like passport related services. he is talking about doing more.

in rural areas, post offices are often a key service center. host: another two topics, what happened to the machines? the government not having to pay for its mail. guest: more than a decade, the postal service has been removing mail sorting machines. it has not been doing these for people purposes. legally, it is required to run an efficient mail network. mail volume has been going down, down 40% in 2008. there are studies that go back as far as 2012, government accountability office studies saying the postal service has too much mail sorting equipment. postmaster generals have been removing these machines because

they are not needed and are expensive to maintain. as far as the government getting free mail, i'm not sure what the caller means by that. agencies do use the postal service, but they do not use it freely. when they pay to send out a bunch of notices, they have to pay the postal services, but then again the agencies are typically compensated through taxpayer dollars. host: what about lawmakers and correspondence with constituents? guest: oh yeah, that still happens. it is a rounding error. the postal service, i believe they bear some of the costs related to that, but it is a tiny amount of mail. host: we will go to gary in newport, kentucky. caller: hello. how are you?

it looks like the post office would learn a few things from fedex and ups about how to run more efficient and everything. i'm pretty sure the post office is already being privatized a little bit because they are kind of doing business with fedex. they are delivering some of their ground packages anyway. i like my mailman. i like the post office. i would like to see everybody share the wealth. it does not seem like the post office is getting their cut of the pie. guest: the postal service has a collaborator and competitor relationship with private delivery companies. the postal service wants to beat them, take more packages and deliver them faster, but the

postal service uses the private sector and vice versa. the postal service uses fedex to fly at because the postal service does not think it is efficient to have its own fleet of airlines. private shipping companies often use the postal service as delivery for the last mile. it is a complicated relationship. host: if you go to aei.org, kevin kosar, resident scholar for washington journal continue.

host: each monday in the last hour of the washington journal, we are taking a deep dive into different aspects of the covid-19 pandemic and response. this week we are taking some time to talk about covid-19 data when it comes to the coronavirus infections, debts, and vaccinations. our guest is alexis, a staff writer at the atlantic and cofounder of the covid-19 tracking project. what is this project? guest: it was an effort and remains an effort to compile data from all of the states. at the beginning of the pandemic, we d