Bill Moyers Talks with Lisa Graves about the Ongoing Threat to the US ... (2)
And there's also a very partisan, extraordinary political agenda by this president to say that he doesn't want to support funding the Postal Service because of the probability in fact that many people will vote by mail during this election because of this deadly pandemic.
BILL MOYERS: The man named Postmaster General by President Trump, Louis DeJoy, he's become the poster boy for getting rid of the Postal Service. He was once the finance chairman of the Republican National Convention. He's given more than $2.5 million to the Republican Party. He helps finance a Republican group that's trying to suppress the vote, that's their goal. He and his wife have invested millions of dollars in competitors or contractors to the Postal Service. And David Sirota, the independent investigative columnist wrote that the former chairman of the Postal Service board of governors is also chairman of a $100 million Republican Super PAC, and he has a lot of connections to companies that have a direct interest in the Postal Service he now oversees. I mean, it seems that Republican multi-millionaires have a hammer lock on the Postal Service and are quite frankly, squeezing the life out of it.
LISA GRAVES: Well, that's what it seems to me. It was shocking to learn that among the other things that Mitch McConnell had been doing or not doing in the Senate, he wasn't just blocking President Obama's judicial nominees and then packing the courts when Trump became president. He has also been blocking appointments to this Board of Postal Governors. And for five years, the Board of Governors did not have a quorum due to Mitch McConnell's obstruction. But as soon as Trump became president, McConnell began filling these posts. And as you point out, the two top men at the U.S. Postal Service right now are deeply, deeply embedded in the Republican Party infrastructure. They've spent enormous amounts of time raising money for the Republican Party. And they have held leadership posts within the Republican Party. And that's Louis DeJoy who is the postmaster general and a guy named Mike Duncan, who is the president of the Board of Governors for the Postal Service. And both of them are extremely partisan people. And, in fact, with respect to Mr. DeJoy, he's the first postmaster general who does not come within the ranks of the Postal Service. He was hired for this position by this packed, stacked board at this time to lead this Postal Service. And his most recent position was basically helping with the fundraising for Donald Trump, the person Donald Trump chose along with Michael Cohen and another man to be the deputy finance chairman for the RNC.
BILL MOYERS: So President Trump is trying to close the deal that Charles Koch began to pursue almost 50 years ago?
RELATED: Money & Politics LISA GRAVES: I think that's right. It's a terrible deal, but it's the deal that the billionaires want, that the American people definitely don't want, haven't been asked about this push, and in fact oppose efforts to weaken the Postal Service and to weaken the delivery of mail.
BILL MOYERS: The Postal Service is one of the most popular democratic institutions in the country.
LISA GRAVES: It is the most popular. In fact, its brand is more popular than every other commercial brand in America.
BILL MOYERS: Well, why do you think the Republican Party is taking such gamble on undermining, sabotaging this highly popular agency?
LISA GRAVES: Well, I think it's all about power unfortunately. For many, many years, support for the Postal Service has been bipartisan. There are people on the right and the left who've written in support of it. A lot of members have insisted the Postal Service not cut back hours, not cut back days, making sure that rural routes get served. It's not characteristic for it to be seen as this political prize or as this political operation. But in the Trump administration, that's exactly what it appears to be. And we've see the press about this new postmaster presiding over this effort to basically allow mail to accumulate. The ethos of the Postal Service is that, every time mail comes in, it gets processed that day and goes out, otherwise it accumulates. The Postal Service can't allow that sort of accumulation, because then people don't get their mail, they don't get their medicines. And so DeJoy is limiting the capacity of the Postal Service to process, to sort mail.
BILL MOYERS: We all know the Postal Service has been experiencing some significant financial problems in the last few years. And Louis DeJoy says he's only trying to streamline the Postal Service and cut costs to make it more profitable. What's your response to that?
LISA GRAVES: There are two components of the financial crisis of the Postal Service. One is the crisis that's facing all of America, in terms of this pandemic. And how business has slowed. But costs continue for the Postal Service. But it has a longer issue in terms of its finances, because of that 2006 act, which soaked up all of its financial reserves and also put this huge anchor of a liability on its books that make it look more illiquid in essence than it is. While Lou DeJoy is making this public showing of being concerned with efficiency, what he really should be doing is embracing the request of his predecessor, Megan Brennan, the former postmaster general, who said we need $75 billion to help the Postal Service survive and thrive. But DeJoy is silent on that point.
BILL MOYERS: That 2006 law that in effect put financial handcuffs on the Postal Service was spearheaded by Senator Susan Collins of Maine. Done with the backing of the Republican Policy Committee in the Senate. Were they trying to stack the deck against the Postal Service even then?
LISA GRAVES: Well, what I know is that the Bush administration issued a report in which they talked about privatizing the Postal Service more than 150 times. And they laid out different ways to privatize it, while also acknowledging in that report that there was no public support for doing so. That this was not an idea or policy that was promoted by the American people. And then when the bill came to Susan Collins, that 2006 act, it only mentioned privatization once. In fact, it was described as “modernizing the Postal Service,” or in the words that we're hearing from DeJoy, “making it more efficient.” I don't know how the chairperson of the committee in Congress that has responsibility over the Postal Service, and that was Senator Susan Collins, could have proper oversight knowing that the year before that bill passed, the Postal Service had net revenue of about a billion dollars. I don't know how anyone could think in that oversight role that the Postal Service could then absorb an additional nearly $5 billion liability for that year, and the year after that, and the year after that, and so on, to create this big fund to have this unprecedented funding for future retiree health benefits decades into the future. I have to assume that she understood the financial books of the Postal Service and signed off on it anyway. She helped shepherd that bill into law and proudly stood over George Bush's shoulders as he signed it into law.
BILL MOYERS: So, I'm going to assume that you were not surprised last week to hear President Trump admit openly, he wasn't pressed, he just acknowledged, he in effect confessed that he is starving the Postal Service of money in order to make it harder for Americans to vote by mail in November. Do you agree that that's the strategy, openly acknowledged?
LISA GRAVES: Well, I think, as the saying goes, when someone tells you who they are, believe them. And in this instance, Donald Trump has expressly acknowledged that that's his goal. And he has also been spreading a lot of disinformation about vote by mail and making false claims about fraud, assertions that many, many people have refuted. He apparently perceives this as people voting by mail during this pandemic as something that could increase the number of people who vote against him. He is signaling out loud that he does not want the Postal Service to be able to do its job. A job that it's done in election after election. And here he has his close friend in essence, a person who has held fundraisers at his house in North Carolina for President Trump. A person who he entrusted with being the deputy finance chairman for the RNC, someone in essence handpicked by him for that and for this role. And that man is now engaging in these very disruptive actions that are really hindering the ability of people to get the mail. And also telling the states that they may not be able to meet the deadlines, the statutory deadlines the Postal Service has met in prior elections for delivering the mail.
BILL MOYERS: Talking about the postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, right?
LISA GRAVES: Yes.
BILL MOYERS: You probably remember that earlier this year, President Trump told FOX & FRIENDS, one of his favorite programs on FOX NEWS, that if voting reaches certain levels, quote, “You would never have a Republican elected in this country again.” So, he's clearly linking high turnout to Republicans losing elections. LISA GRAVES: Yes.
There are two parts to that that I think are particularly noteworthy. One of the benefits of voting by mail where people have the capacity to do it is that there's a paper record of those ballots. And so, if there's a recount, those ballots can be hand counted there to be, you know, no doubt in terms of what the machines might say. But the second part is that, what we've seen across the country since the census of 2010, since that midterm election and the hyperpartisan redistricting that's happened in states across the country, what we've seen is many of these legislatures moving to make it harder for Americans to vote. And those are legislatures controlled by Republicans. So for many decades in this country, starting with the Voting Rights Act in 1965 the trend was toward making it easier for Americans to vote. Expanding voting hours, expanding ability to vote by mail, expanding the number of polling sites. What we've seen with the Republicans over this last decade has been a concerted effort to try to limit the ability of Americans to vote, to limit the ways that they could vote, how they can vote. And to make it harder for them to vote. We've also seen efforts by Republican elected officials to limit the number of places that people can vote. Which would increase the length of time people have to stand in line for voting. But we've also seen that some of these suburban locations have been fully staffed, have had more polling places. But cities, or the edges of cities where there are more potentially Democratic voters to vote, those places have had fewer polling places by a lot.
BILL MOYERS: Does this help you understand why conservatives on the Supreme Court including led by Chief Justice John Roberts, as well as Republicans in Congress and the Republican Party across the country, why they're all working against voting rights?
LISA GRAVES: I think what we're seeing is minority rule in America. That's certainly the case from the standpoint of the popular vote in 2016 for the presidency. Trump won a minority of the popular vote but won a majority of electoral college votes. In my state, in Wisconsin every statewide elected office is held by Democrats. And the vote tally in the state was majority Democratic, but both houses of the state legislature here are controlled by Republicans. And that's due to districting. And so what you have in essence is a Republican Party that is embracing many extreme ideas that are actually not supported by the majority of people in their states. The way they're able to accomplish that agenda is by controlling the structures of our elections and making it harder for their opponents, the Democrats to vote.
