[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 130 (Friday, August 7, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4567-S4568]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. ROUNDS:
  S. 5373. A bill to amend title 39, United States Code, to limit the 
compensation and benefits provided to executive officers of the Postal 
Service, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Homeland Security 
and Governmental Affairs.
  Mr. ROUNDS. Mr. President, I rise today to express my concerns with 
the U.S. Postal Service operations in South Dakota, my home State. Over 
the past year or so, my team has heard from thousands of South Dakotans 
expressing their frustrations and, frankly, anger about poor mail 
delivery in our State.
  We have heard from veterans who are not getting their medication on 
time; we have heard from individuals who are having to pay late fees 
because their bills arrive the day they are due; and we have heard from 
people who simply aren't getting their mail delivered, even though they 
can see on the Postal Service app that they should be receiving it that 
day.
  My team wanted to test it for ourselves. We wanted to see how long it 
would take to send a piece of first-class mail from our office in Rapid 
City, SD, to Pierre, SD, the capital of our State, which is about 172 
miles driving distance away.
  That would be from Rapid City to Pierre.
  Instead of taking a direct route, this letter went from Rapid City 
west to Denver, and then to Des Moines, IA, across Nebraska and then 
from Des Moines, IA, to Fargo, ND, and then back to Pierre.
  Let me do the math for you. This letter traveled over 1,800 miles 
across four different States just to end up back at South Dakota.
  As soon as we caught wind of just how bad the mail service had gotten 
in South Dakota, I tried to have an open discussion with the Postal 
Service leaders. When it became clear to me that they weren't 
interested in fixing it, I requested an investigation from the Office 
of the Inspector General of the Postal Service which happens to answer 
to Congress, not to the Postal Service.
  The OIG accepted our request and began to investigate the issues with 
mail service in South Dakota. As a part of their investigations, they 
were on the ground in South Dakota earlier this year. For evidence of 
just how deep the problem in the Postal Service runs, the OIG 
reiterated to my team and to me that they had to do this investigation 
clandestinely. If Postal Service leaders caught wind of where OIG 
representatives were going to be on which days, they could try to 
manipulate the results.
  Turns out, they were correct. As soon as it was announced that the 
OIG team would be heading to South Dakota, my team heard from local 
post office employees that they were being asked to hide piles of mail.
  As I mentioned, we have also heard countless stories about lifesaving 
prescriptions not arriving for our veterans who get many of their 
refills through the mail. In fact, that is the desired route for many 
of our veterans to get their prescriptions.
  According to the Black Hills VA, the USPS has lost so many important 
medications, that the VA has had to repeatedly notify the Drug 
Enforcement Administration and the U.S. Postal Service inspector 
general. In some parts of the country, the VA tells veterans they 
should order prescription refills at least 20 days before their supply 
runs out to account for these delays.
  By comparison, it only took half that time to put a man on the Moon. 
I have even heard from the Secretary of the VA Doug Collins who, 
because of the nationwide postal delays, he directed his staff to look 
into policies on how the VA can better work with independent community 
pharmacies to give veterans the prescriptions they need to live a 
healthy life.
  It should not come down to this.
  Five years ago, the Postal Service told Congress that it needed 
billions of dollars in financial relief to become sustainable. Based on 
that promise, Congress passed the Postal Service Reform Act. They 
promised that the so-called Delivering for America plan would cut 
costs, improve service, and return the Postal Service to profitability.
  Instead, today Americans face unprecedented costs when they want to 
mail a letter with delivery times worse than the Pony Express, all 
while the Postal Service continues to burn through billions of dollars 
as if money grows on trees.
  The U.S. Postal Service decided that in order to be cost effective, 
they should deprioritize rural America. For many years, mail was picked 
up from post offices and routed to processing

[[Page S4568]]

facilities at least twice a day, regardless of where you lived or how 
rural you may be.
  But under the Postal Service's Regional Transportation Optimization 
initiative, mail from post offices located more than 50 miles from a 
processing facility are only sent to processing facilities once in a 
single morning dispatch, and in many cases, this adds up to a full-day 
delay before a letter starts its journey to the processing facility.
  Now, that is bad enough, but it also means that despite a letter 
being in the post office's legal possession, it is not postmarked until 
at least the next day. For many, this can be the difference between a 
tax return being on time or an absentee ballot being counted, simply 
because of where you live.
  And despite these cost-saving measures, now the U.S. Postal Service 
is asking for billions more, all while senior executives receive large 
bonuses and lavish benefits like wellness reimbursement incentives, 
financial planning, retirement counseling services, TSA PreCheck--
reimbursement for it--and membership in up to two airline lounge clubs 
per year.
  The post office also created a deferred compensation program. Yes, a 
deferred compensation program to pay its highest paid officers above 
compensation limits that have been imposed by Congress.
  That needs to end.
  And that is the reason that I am introducing the USPS Executive 
Benefit and Bonus Removal Act. Incompetent bureaucrats should not get 
bonuses when the mail does not run on time. If the Postal Service were 
serious about cutting costs, they should have cut costs inside its own 
ivory tower before passing costs on to the American people who are 
still receiving terrible service.
  In addition, I have announced that I am placing holds on every 
nominee for the Postal Service board of directors until their leaders 
take steps to fix mail service in South Dakota. I suspect other 
Senators from rural States may do the same.
  To lift these holds, I want the Postal Service to commit to making 
these three fixes in South Dakota at a minimum: No. 1, immediately 
suspend their Regional Transportation Optimization in South Dakota on a 
permanent basis; No. 2, start delivering intrastate mail--meaning, mail 
inside of South Dakota--within 1 to 2 days using our existing 
facilities that they have already been scaling back; and No. 3, they 
need to commit fully to implementing all findings of the OIG 
investigation when it becomes available.
  Now, I have spoken with some of my Senate colleagues who are seeing 
the same issues in rural parts of their States. I look forward to 
working together to find a different model for the Postal Service that 
actually works for the American people, again, despite the blinders 
that our Postal Service leadership seem to have on.
  It is way past time that we put the ``service'' back into the Postal 
Service.

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