DOGE teams up with USPS

There's plenty of fat to trim.

Photo by Kanchanara on Unsplash

DOGE may have finally found a worthy adversary: postal bloat. Reuters recently reported,

U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told Congress he signed an agreement with Elon Musk's DOGE government reform team to provide assistance to the money-losing agency as it works to address "big problems." … DeJoy told Congress in a letter seen by Reuters that USPS plans to reduce its workforce by 10,000 workers in the next month through a voluntary early retirement program.

The USPS lost $9.5 billion in FY 2024, but not all hope is lost for a fiscally-sustainable agency. As I recently noted on this blog, America’s mail carrier can save more than $7 billion per year in five simple steps:

• End Saturday Delivery (estimated annual savings: $2.6 billion)

• Hire Fewer Career Workers (estimated annual savings: $2 billion)

• Price Packages to Reflect Delivery Costs (estimated annual savings: $1.3 billion)

• End Electric Vehicle Purchases (estimated annual savings: $1 billion)

• Crack Down on Counterfeit Postage (estimated annual savings: $400 million)

But wait, there’s more! The USPS does all sorts of weird stuff that it could do without. There’s producing a TV show (“Dear Santa, The Series”), managing a middling money order business, bankrolling a podcast, and having an in-house historian.

Small things add up, and the really big things (like ending Saturday delivery) add up fast. It’s long past time for some cost-cutting at the USPS. Hopefully, DOGE is up to the task.