Dear Postmaster General Brennan:
I write to request that you provide me with weekly updates on the revenue of the United States Postal Service (USPS) during the COVID-19 pandemic. On April 24, your staff provided the weekly revenue for the first five weeks of the crisis, but has since withheld the information.
Despite recent media reports suggesting that the COVID-19 pandemic has drastically hurt USPS, the revenue data provided to my staff for the first five weeks of the crisis shows a different story. From March 16, 2020, through April 19, 2020, revenues for USPS were down 5.86 percent compared with similar dates last year. That was a far cry from the 30 percent that USPS had been publicly projecting. Although I have yet to receive official data to confirm this, my understanding is that USPS revenues have recently improved-so much so that this April’s revenues were close to equal to those in April 2019.
The significant difference between USPS’s worst-case scenario projections and reality illustrates why it is critical that USPS be fully transparent with, and provide weekly data to, policymakers. To that end, I ask that you please provide my staff with the weekly revenue from April 19 to present, and continue to provide such data on a weekly basis for the foreseeable future.
I appreciate your commitment to an important organization that many Americans rely upon, and I am grateful to the postal carriers across the country who continue to deliver goods and mail during the COVID-19 pandemic. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me directly, or have your staff contact Patrick Bailey of my staff at 202-224-4751.
Sincerely,
Ron Johnson
Chairman
Source: U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
