This episode looks at two very different questions surrounding the U.S. Postal Service: how the Trump administration tried to use it to impose new requirements on mail-in voting, and whether the Postal Service itself is financially sustainable. We examine the new election-mail rule and the court fight that stopped it for 2026, then dig into what’s actually driving USPS’s financial problems—and whether they can be fixed.
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Background Sources
Recommended Congressional Dish Episodes
CD250: Congress Saves the Postal Service
CD220: Postal Service Sabotage
Voting by Mail
The Executive Order, the Rule, and the Whistleblower
Letter from Sen. Richard Blumenthal to Postmaster General David Steiner re: USPS Whistleblower Disclosure August 31, 2025. Richard Blumenthal Official Senate Website.
“Ballot Mail for Federal Elections: Final Rule.” U.S. Postal Service. August 26, 2026. Federal Register.
“Ensuring Citizenship Verification and Integrity in Federal Elections,” [Executive Order 14399]. Donald J. Trump. March 31, 2026. The White House.
The Maryland Mistake
“Minnesota printer takes responsibility for mail-in ballot error.” Bryan P. Sears. July 24, 2026. Maryland Matters.
Trump Seeking Voter Data
“The Trump administration has filed 31 lawsuits seeking states’ voter data. Here’s where they stand.” Melissa Quinn. September 22, 2026. CBS News.
Supreme Court Ruling
United States Postal Service v. California, 609 U.S. ___ (2026).
USPS Business Model
Mandates
39 USC 3622: Modern rate regulation
GAO Report
“U.S. Postal Service: Action Needed to Fix Unsustainable Business Model”, [GAO-26-107-336]. December 16, 2025. U.S. Government Accountability Office.
Audio Sources
Reforming the U.S. Postal Service’s Broken Business Model
Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
June 24, 2026
Witness:
- David P. Steiner, Postmaster General, United States Postal Service
Clips
23:45 Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI):
The President’s March Executive Order directs the postal service to create “new mail-in absentee participation lists,” which they will use to verify which voters are eligible to receive and cast ballots through the mail. This would give the postal service unprecedented authority over american elections and is an unconstitutional subversion of the postal service’s duty. I’m disappointed that the postal service shows to give in to the president’s illegal demands by issuing a proposed regulation that risks disenfranchising millions of eligible American voters nationwide. The board of governors did not even vote on these approved changes.
24:30 Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI): Under the proposed rules, states must submit each absentee voter to a new national database controlled by the postal service and comply with new federal ballot mail-in requirements, or they will be prohibited from using the mail-in voting in their elections. The postal service will also conduct undefined ballot verification processes to ensure states meet these new federally imposed standards. Ultimately the federal government will serve as the final arbiter as to who can actually vote by mail.
27:25 David Steiner: Levers available to private sector enterprises and to government agencies are unavailable to the Postal Service. So, for example, first we’re mandated by law to deliver to every address. More than 170 million of them, six days a week. And there are over a million new stops added every year. This leads to 84% of city delivery and 52% of rural delivery routes being financially under water. Moreover, 58%, or 18,000, of our post offices are losing money, occurring over $2.5 billion in operating costs. In a normal business model, if 70% of routes are losing money, you would adjust the routes. In a normal business model, if 60% of the stores you had were losing money, you’d close them. We’re not allowed to do either. That is a broken business model.
28:30 David Steiner:
We’re not allowed to unilaterally raise prices, and we’re required by law to give billions of dollars in discounts to many mailers.
28:40 David Steiner:
We can only invest our retirement assets in U.S. treasuries. If we were able to invest conservatively in other assets, we could have had nearly $1 trillion in additional retirement assets. And our retirement plans would be well overfunded rather than underfunded.
29:00 David Steiner:
We pay an unfair allocation of CSRS (Civil Service Retirement System) benefits for retirees that were with the Post Office Department before it became the independent Postal Service. That costs us about $3.5 billion a year.
29:10 David Steiner:
We cannot borrow more than $15 billion due to a statutory limit that was established decades ago that has not been adjusted for earnings or for inflation.
29:20 David Steiner:
We’re not allowed to manage our workers’ compensation claims, costing us anywhere from $400 million to $800 million a year.
29:40 David Steiner:
We also reduced work hours by 56 million hours, equivalent to $3 billion, and reduced our overall head count by 28,000.
30:15 David Steiner:
To me, the choice for Congress is clear. Either remove the mandates that create the unsustainable business model or compensate the postal service for money-losing mandates.
31:40 David Steiner:
The postal service has been an integral part of the growth of America, subsidizing the growth of steam ships, railroads, aviation, and technology. So subsidizing the post office has been a spectacular investment for the United States.
41:30 Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI):
My question for you is, under what legal authority can the Postal Service regulate who and how people can vote by mail?
David Steiner:
Yeah, as you know, our regulations are proposed regulations, not final regulations. As to the authority, I used to be a lawyer, but I was a business lawyer, not a constitutional lawyer. So I would have to defer that to the courts to understand the authority.
43:10 David Steiner:
The Postal Service is not a political organization. As I think you aptly said, we deliver mail. That’s what we do. We deliver mail. And that’s what ballots are. Ballots are mail. Now, they are a special kind of mail, obviously. They need special care. And so years ago we recommended what we call Kit 600. The fundamental premise of Kit 600 is a unique bar code and a unique envelope. That allows to us move those ballots more efficiently, more securely. That is what our proposed rules suggest, is that we have a unique bar code, a unique envelope. That is not something that is new. That’s something that’s been used by states throughout the country on both sides of the political spectrum. So California has followed it, Oregon has followed it, Arizona has followed it, Florida has followed it, among many other states. You know, to me, it’s not a political question, it’s a question of how do we most efficiently and securely move ballots? We’ve been recommending this for many years, all this does is make it a requirement.
Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI):
You can follow best practices to deliver more efficiently without having control of vast voter rolls and having the ability to have that data. This is basically a back doorway for the federal government to get voting information that states control under the U.S. Constitution.
44:45 Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI):
So yes or no, if a state refuses to turn their absentee voter list over to the federal government, will the Postal Service still mail their ballots under this proposal?
David Steiner:
Under our proposed regulation, no. We would still the state we need the manifest in order to – look, what we’re asking —
Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI):
That’s the answer. You’d tell them no. The proposed rule basically coerces states to conform to new requirements and hand over their absentee voter rolls, or face the consequences of not being able to vote by mail. Some states, that’s all they do. Oregon is completely vote by mail. If they say no, we control the list, the states control the list —
David Steiner:
Oregon has followed kit 600 since the day they started voting by mail.
Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI):
This is a different issue. This will be a lot different issue. You’re telling the states, Either give the federal government this information — trust the federal government, trust the Trump administration, we’ll take good care of these — or if you don’t do it, you can’t mail absentee ballots. You’re going to make a decision that people cannot vote by mail. That’s unacceptable.
David Steiner:
All that does, Senator, is make sure that we match the ballots that a state believes they’re sending out to what actually gets sent out. So all the state gives us is a list of here are the voters that are supposed to get ballots and here are the ballots. We then compare the two, make sure that the ballots that are supposed to be sent get sent. You know, if Maryland had followed that, they probably wouldn’t be in the problem they’re in today. It is a much more efficient, much more effective way to make sure that states – I would think that states would want the information, to ensure that the ballots that they think they’re sending out are the ballots that are actually being sent out.
Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI):
They do know when they’re dropping mail. I think they can understand that. They think if they put an address with their voter rolls on a piece of mail for a ballot and give it to you, they do expect you’re actually going to deliver it. You don’t have to say we want all of your information. We want that information in our control. You mentioned Maryland. I think that was a printing error. This regulation wouldn’t have done anything to fix what happened in Maryland. The states control their own elections. It’s pretty clear in the Constitution. An effort by this administration to nationalize elections and have the federal government having this information is incredibly dangerous precedent. You can imagine sharing this information with the Department of Homeland Security and using these lists for a variety of nefarious purposes. We need to protect the integrity of the voting rolls. We need to protect the separation of elections from federal government and ensure that our state and local governments are the ones administering their own elections. That’s what this is about.
David Steiner:
Well, we are the Postal Service. All we do is deliver mail. We’re trying to deliver it securely, efficiently, and accurately.
54:10 Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH):
In my state of New Hampshire, where people vote absentee only if they are physically unable to be at the polls on election day, and often don’t know that that will be the case until kind of the 11th hour. It means that some eligible voters will be unable to vote in my state.
54:50 Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH):
If a court tells you to withdraw your rule or to not enforce it, will you follow that court order?
David Steiner:
Obviously, yes, we follow court orders.
59:55 David Steiner:
We are out of cash. We are out of cash. If we had to pay all of our bills today, we could not pay all of our bills today. We are out of cash. What we are doing right now is we’re basically borrowing money from our retirement plans to fund current operations. I’m not particularly comfortable with that. I promise you our employees are not comfortable with that.
Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH):
And neither am I.
David Steiner:
None of us should be comfortable with that. To me that’s why we have to have this discussion of how we fix this broken business model.
1:12:25 Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL):
If there were no limitations on what you could do, what would you do?
David Steiner:
You may have seen the press reports. We actually brought in the preeminent restructuring firm in the world to look and tell us exactly that. Let’s assume that we are not going to get any help. What are we going to do? They are in the process of putting that report together. I would tell you that there is absolutely no doubt that that would lead to a streamed down Postal Service. It would lead to delays in service. Look, as the chairman very appropriately pointed out, 80% of our costs are labor costs. There is only one way you can become profitable here, and that is address the labor costs. We would have to go in and look at how we can change days of service, reduce the level of services, and we would have to shut down a massive number of Post Offices.
1:13:30 Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL):
If you look at the number of pieces of marketing mail versus the revenue, it is dramatically less per piece than first class. Why is that? First off, I’m sure we all love all the marketing mail we get. I have to get an extra recycling bin for it.
David Steiner:
My old business. We loved that, by the way.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL):
That’s probably good for you, it just goes in the recycling, I don’t even look at it.
David Steiner:
But it is the antiquated pricing structure that is imposed upon us by the PRC, the Postal Regulatory Commission.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL):
Who is that?
David Steiner:
They were set up when the Postal Service was split so that they could oversee this “monopoly”. In 1971, arguably we were a monopoly. There is zero chance that we are a monopoly at this point in time. So I completely agree with the chairman. It seems to me that we have a regulatory body that is regulating in a past era.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL):
Why wouldn’t they want you to make money?
David Steiner:
What I understood from them — and I won’t profess to speak for them — they say they have to balance a number of things.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL):
The marketing mail.
David Steiner:
Here is the balance they did last. They told us we can only raise prices once a year, and they acknowledged that that could be $700 million for the Postal Service. That could cost us 700 million dollars. In their opinion, they said that does not make a big dent in their total loss, so we are going to do it. Who does that benefit? The marketing mailers. That is $700 billion that got transferred from us directly to our customers.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL):
It got transfered to the taxpayers of the country. That’s who it got transfered to. The taxpayers pay for it, right? Because we are going to have to cover your losses.
David Steiner: That is absolutely correct. I think your point is absolutely correct. A normal business takes price and volume and finds the best mix.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL):
Why are they in existence? Why do you need them?
David Steiner:
We don’t need them, but they are in existence, ostensibly because we are a monopoly and they have to regulate the monopoly.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL):
How many marketing contracts have you lost to FedEx and UPS? Just for marketing mail?
David Steiner:
Marketing mail, we are the only ones that deliver marketing mail. We do have a monopoly on the mailbox.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL):
But you can’t charge whatever price?
David Steiner:
No.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL):
And you have to charge less than first class.
David Steiner:
Absolutely.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL):
So a letter I want to send to my grandkid costs me more than the marketing stuff I don’t want to read.
David Steiner:
Absolutely. And Senator, you would not believe how arcane and complicated those pricing rules are because there are so many different classes and so many different discounts. You definitely need an advanced degree to understand them and I don’t.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL):
You acknowledge that if we go borrow money, you are going to come back later and ask for the taxpayer to pay for it.
David Steiner: Well, no. I truly believe, and this is in defense of the mailing industry — I truly believe that if we become an economic engine rather than just thinking of us in terms of delivery, and we helped grow that industry, it is a $2 trillion industry. And actually, the marketing that they do is very effective. We can make it more effective if we can manage the price per volume.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL):
They should pay for it. If they are going to make money off it, they should pay for it.
David Steiner:
I would hope they do pay for it through paying taxes. Look, I completely agree on the pricing piece too. We have to match price and volume that is best for us. But I truly do believe that this $2 trillion ecosystem — we have a choice to either shrink it or grow it. It has been shrinking for the past 15 years. If it continues to shrink, net dollars into the treasury get reduced. I think it is a discussion worth having.
1:30:40 Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA):
I also want to address what Senator Scott brought up, talking about the marketing mail. I actually do have a bill that would address this and help you out considerably. It is a bill addressing political junk mail. Because I’m sorry, Republicans and Democrats alike – we are sending out a lot of flyers at a discounted price, and we should disallow that. Political committees, you name it, our own committees – we should have to pay the full price to send out the political junk mail. I enjoy it. I am in this world. But you know what? When I get political flyers in the mail at home, I also am using the recycling bin. Again, my bill would require the postal service to send mail from those qualified political committees at a regular rate. So we see 2.3 billion pieces of political mail every single year, and that would certainly contribute to your revenue stream if we got rid of that discounted rate.
David Steiner:
The amazing thing I say about this organization is it is the law of large numbers. 2.3 billion times a small amount is a huge amount. It is the amazing thing about this organization. 110 billion pieces – it does not take a lot to create a lot of revenue.
1:41:20 Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH):
If the Post Office Inspector were to look at unsolicited mail out ballots, where you go to an apartment complex and one unit is receiving six ballots – that is a problem, right? If there is only one human being that lives in that apartment, and that one human being is receiving six ballots, none of which are in their name there had been turnover or movement, you wouldn’t just suggest — and my democratic colleagues, have obviously left the building here — but you would not suggest that that one person receive ballots that they did not ask for that aren’t even in their name. You would go, This is a problem, correct?
David Steiner:
Anytime we see what we would consider potential illegal activity – obviously, there are search warrants. There are different rules you have to follow. But that is what our Postal Inspection Service is therefore, is to look for those type of situations. We don’t open mail. We don’t stop the delivery of mail. But we can certainly go to other agencies from a law-enforcement point of view.
Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH):
And say, This is a problem. We are seeing potential illegal activity.
1:52:30 Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY):
The government is not efficient. They are not bad people. But you don’t have a profit motive and you have too many restrictions. So you will never – not you, but the Post Office will never be efficient. The only way to make them more efficient is to outsource to companies that have to make a profit.
1:53:10 Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY):
I don’t think there is the hope that you were going to somehow out compete amazon or ups or something. You really should not be trying to get more into their business. You should be trying to have less business, period, and try to have less of the government doing any business that you are involved with, because – and I think you would still lose money. If you outsourced 100%, you would still lose money.
1:59:40 Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT):
The president’s Executive Order says that the Postal Service should somehow review voter lists and then refuse to deliver mail, in effect.
David Steiner:
We don’t review the voter list. The voter list for us is like a manifest. The state gives us the list of voters that they want ballots to go to. And then they give us the ballots. We match the ballots with the list and we can tell the state, yes, all the ballots that you say are going to the right people are going. Or no, different ballots are going. Maybe you missed some ballots. Its what I said earlier. It really is trying to help the state make sure that the ballots that they send to the voters actually get there and get to those voters. It is strictly a manifest for us to make sure that the right ballots are going to the right people.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT):
And do you have authority to deny delivery of ballots?
David Steiner:
Not under the current rules. Our proposed rules would say that if we don’t have that manifest that we cannot move the mail.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT):
But you are not going to deliver – you are not going to refuse to deliver ballots to a voter that the states say is registered?
David Steiner:
Absolutely not.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT):
And you are not going to review the legitimacy of whether someone is properly registered?
David Steiner:
No. Not our function. We deliver mail.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT):
What if states say to you, we would just as soon you not do that kind of review?
David Steiner:
Do the manifest and the ballots?
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT): Correct.
David Steiner:
Under the proposed rule, we would then not deliver that mail.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT):
You would refuse to deliver mail if states would prefer that you not do the matching?
David Steiner:
Yeah, if they don’t comply with a valid rule – as you know, the rules are proposed rules, they are not final rules. We have a comment period we are looking at. Under the proposed rules, that would be correct.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT):
Do you agree with the proposed rule?
David Steiner:
What I think is that we need to be efficient and accurate in moving ballots. When you look at what we have suggested to states now for years and years and years and years, it is exactly this rule. If you look at it, whether it is Connecticut, Michigan, California, we have something we call kit 600. We have a lot of people that educate your folks in the state as to how to do it. The kit 600 recommends unique barcodes and unique envelopes.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT):
If the state of Connecticut says to you we want you to deliver mail-in ballots without conducting your purported supposed so-called review, which is unconstitutional, you will deliver the mail to Connecticut voters. Is that correct?
David Steiner:
I’m confused. Under the proposed rule or under current rules?
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT):
Under the constitution of the United States, you have an obligation. You run the postal service. You deliver the mail. You don’t review ballots or registration. Nobody said you should. The founding fathers did not envision that kind of review. This proposed rule is bogus and I want your commitment that you will deliver the mail, including mail-in ballots, to Connecticut voters, without conducting this bogus sham review.
David Steiner:
We will deliver every piece of mail that meets our then-current regulation.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT):
Your regulations should not include a review or second-guessing the state on who its electors are, correct?
David Steiner:
Our proposed rule is, as you know, subject to litigation. We will see how that all turns out.
Hearing with the Commissioners of the Postal Regulatory System
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Subcommittee on Government Operations
June 4, 2026
Witnesses:
- Robert Taub, Vice Chairman, Postal Regulatory Commission
- Ann Fisher, Commissioner, Postal Regulatory Commission
- Thomas Day, Commissioner, Postal Regulatory Commission
- Ashley Poling, Commissioner, Postal Regulatory Commission
Clips
1:08:00 Rep. Tim Burchett, (R-TN):
What are the market-dominant products offered by the United States Postal Service?
Robert Taub: Congressman, those are the overwhelming majority of letter, flats, periodicals, newspaper/magazines. So, when you think of your first-class letters and cards, that is the market-dominant product. The result is based in statute, which is the idea that if the Postal Service either has a statutory monopoly over that, for example, letters no one else can deliver, or there is an economic test in law, but the Post Service has market dominance at a level that they can raise prices substantially, either degrade service, without the significant risk of losing business That is the statutory test—it is regulated as market dominant. If it is not, it is competitive where they have immense flexibility to price, like parcels.
1:08:55 Rep. Tim Burchett, (R-TN): Does every category of Marketing Mail make money, including the flats?
Robert Taub: Flats is one of the areas, Marketing Mail flats, where they are losing money, but the rest of Marketing Mail is actually contributing quite a bit to the overhead.
2:35:30 Thomas Day:
You have got to find the right mix between cost effectiveness and your obligation to service, and I think there is no one of those that is the single right answer. What is the right blend? And I think it is in the name of the organization. It is the Postal Service. ‘‘Service’’ has always been the key. And I will just close it with this. I have always found in my leadership time at the Postal Service—running districts, running plants—that when the Postal Service provides quality service with consistency, it also has the lowest cost. It is an efficient operation.
2:37:25 Ashley Poling:
What I worry a lot about is that in these rural areas, right, it is not always as profitable to deliver to them, right? And so, and unlike the Postal Service, private carriers have the option of deciding not to, right, not to deliver to those areas or to charge rural surcharges. The Postal Service has to be accessible and affordable to everyone.
United States Postal Service’s Role in 2024 Election Mail Readiness
House Committee on Appropriations
September 26, 2024
Witness:
- Louis DeJoy, then Postmaster General and Chief Executive Officer, United States Postal Service
Clips
49:55 Louis DeJoy:
For election mail we add to that with additional processes called Extraordinary Measures, where each day our carriers rifle through 300 million pieces of mail as they move through the system and look for look for ballots and pull them out and expedite them through a variety of different ways across the nation.
1:13:30 Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC):
Do all state ballots look the same? How do you know to treat one in Minnesota the same as one that you get from North Carolina?
Louis DeJoy:
No, they don’t look the same. And the exceptions that we are talking about with the United States Postal Service are few, just as they are with with the election boards, but they are there too. We get ballots with wrong addresses on them, we get ballots that we don’t have the ability to run through our machines. We get a whole host of other issues, exceptions to the process. With regard to tracking, those election boards that put an IMB barcode — we have recommended a barcode that they put on their ballots, they’re both outgoing and in incoming — we can watch that electronically through the process and we collect that data and we make it available to the election boards so they can watch it they could watch it going out they could watch it and tell their voters that they received their ballot and when it puts back in the mail they can watch it coming back. We don’t get into that data, we just make it available. If every election board did that, if every state did that, we’d have a whole lot easier job making sure that we perform at that high level and it would be it would be visible.
Music
Tired of Being Lied To by David Ippolito
