eNewsletters

Dear friend,

The U.S. Postal Service is an essential institution for our communities, delivering important documents, bills, medications, packages, and other mail to millions of American households every day. But right now, USPS is not serving our communities or its workers as well as it needs to be.

Over the past few years, my office has received numerous complaints about slow mail delivery in Lynden and Snohomish, flood-related closures at the Darrington Post Office, the removal of mail sorting machines ahead of the 2020 election, and the proposed consolidation of the Redmond postal facility, all of which underscore systemic issues that need to be addressed. At the same time, USPS has been operating at a loss for years, resulting in harmful cost-cutting measures. To begin to address these issues, it is necessary for USPS to have sustainable finances for the long term.

The House took an important step this week to strengthen mail service across the country and provide USPS with that financial stability by passing the Postal Service Reform Act. This commonsense, overwhelmingly bipartisan legislation would require mail service at least six days per week by law and make the USPS more transparent and accountable with an online dashboard of local and national delivery performance data.

This bill will also save the USPS nearly $50 billion over the next ten years by enrolling postal service retirees in Medicare and eliminating burdensome, antiquated requirements that force the USPS to pre-fund retiree health benefits for current and retired employees 75 years into the future. These changes will put USPS on more solid financial footing, and hopefully enable USPS to roll back proposed cost-cutting measures and address pervasive issues that are impacting timely mail delivery in our communities.

This legislation is supported by the major postal unions and USPS leadership. It’s past time that we strengthen mail service nationwide to respond to the growing and changing needs of Americans. I am pleased to have helped send this bill to the Senate and will continue to push for meaningful postal reform.

As always, I am here to help you. If you need assistance during this difficult time, please don’t hesitate to leave a message at my Kirkland office at (425) 485-0085. For more updates on what I’m doing for WA-01, you can follow me on social media at the links above.

Stay safe and stay healthy,