 Hey, we're back. We're live. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Think Tech. This is Community Matters. We're talking to Representative Ed Case about the implications of the attack on the U.S. Postal Service. Welcome to the show. It is so nice to have you here. Aloha. Good to be back with you, Jay, and all of your viewers. I really appreciate the opportunity. It's an important moment, I think, as President Obama said. This attack on the post office is an existential threat to our democracy, and I know a lot of people will feel that way. How do you feel about it? I think it's an attack on our democracy. Let me step back and give some context. Of course, the U.S. Postal Service is a part of the integral institution in all of our lives across the board, economic, social, political. As we can get, the U.S. Postal Service predates our country. The U.S. Postal Service is one of the very, very few federal institutions that's actually in our Constitution as a postal delivery service. The founders understood why it was so important to maintain communication throughout our country, and the Postal Service has been doing that job ever since, and it has been key to the successes of our country. It has been key to the integration of our country, and it has been key to the elections that we run to choose our leaders in this country, and it's been key to the direction of our country. And so it is important to start with, and by the way, let's focus right here in our Hawaii, where we have a major U.S. Postal Service, about 2,500 incredible employees across our entire state, serving our entire state from a suburban post offices in my district, the first congressional district, about when you get over the second congressional district where, that I used to represent, 02-07, you have rural post offices that are virtually the only time between those communities in the outside world. And so there is a critical need for the Postal Service even before we got to the craziness, really, if I can put it that way, of 2020 and COVID-19. And so take that basic stability, that basic function of an institution that has the highest rating of any government institution across our entire country. We all understand the importance of the Postal Service. Not only do we understand it from a logical perspective, but it's part of our lives. Our postal carriers are part of our lives. They keep us connected. They let us vote. And so this is an institution that should be an assumed rock of stability as we go through an incredible crisis. And yet a couple of things have happened this year, 2020. First of all, of course, COVID-19 has only accelerated the importance of the US Postal Service because other means of communication and other means of contact are simply not available. And so you have to rely on the Postal Service much more to just move things around our country. And that's really, really critical to this whole areas. For example, our veterans who depend, who really are not supposed to be going into pharmacies quite as much to get their prescribed medicine. The US Postal Service takes care of most of those folks. Social security. US Postal Service handles a great amount of the Social Security Department's workload. So this is an across-the-board need that has been seriously impacted by COVID-19. And so it's more necessary than ever that the Postal Service be fully functioning. And then let's add voting to the equation. I don't think any of us would disagree regardless of whether we, you know, which presidential candidate we support or which local candidate we support. I don't think any of us would disagree, you know, regardless of the policy direction we want to take in this country that we are at a critical election, a generational election, if I can really put it in those terms, a generational choice, the direction of our country. And I think and hope that most of us as Americans, regardless of our political affiliation, would agree that that choice should be made by as many Americans as humanly possible. That an election should represent, truly represent all Americans. And they should and we should participate in that election so that the choices we make are credible, are known to be the representation of America, the mainstream of America. And the reality is that even before COVID-19 came along, voting by mail was becoming quickly the preferred choice for voting. We're not the first here in Hawaii. There are other states, other jurisdictions that have been doing exclusively vote by mail for a long, long time now. But we are some one of the first that has done it so incredibly well as we just saw in our primary election. Huge increase in voter turnout, historical, the largest voter turnout in the history of our state, virtually no claims of fraud, no contested elections. It works. It works. And so as we as we as we take that basic premise and expand it into a COVID-19 world where no American should have to be asked to make the choice between his or her own health and voting by being forced to vote in person when an alternative exists that is easy, convenient, fraud protected, and protects his or her personal health. Well, we should try to do that as much as we possibly can. And that is the importance of voting by mail in a COVID-19 environment. Many, many parts of our country are being forced to a much greater reliance on vote by mail because they were nowhere near as far along the road to vote by mail as we are here. Here we're going to take it for granted a little bit, but you take some of the jurisdictions on the mainland that are not there. They have to vote by mail to have a credible election this time around. So what has happened with the post office? What has happened with this administration? What is what is the what are the elements of the attack? And how effective have those elements been to undermine the post office? Well, I think I think, you know, first of all, we have to look at four or five or six facts, positions, statements, actions by this administration, and then then add them up to ask what that all adds up to. The first and foremost concern that I have is that the Board of Governors of the US Postal Service. So the Postal Service is a quasi government agency now. It runs itself for the most part. And it is run by a Board of Governors who make decisions on, you know, service, income, expense, budgets, personnel. They run that show. And this Board of Governors is a bipartisan board. And at present, this Board of Governors have all been appointed by President Trump. So it's Democrats and Republicans. And this Board of Governors when COVID-19 hit urged Congress and the administration to appropriate $25 billion in emergency assistance to assist the US Postal Service to have a full functioning all the way through COVID-19 and the election. They recognized that this was critical. They recognized that COVID-19 on a variety of fronts was going to impact the Postal Services financial situation. They recognized that they needed the help right now. And they also recognize how critical voting by mail was going to be. So they asked for $25 billion that has not been supported by the administration. In the US House, we did support it. We passed it out three months ago now in our Heroes Act. It's pending over in the US Senate right now. You know, it is critical to assure the full functioning of the US Postal Service. And that alone would be proof positive of a commitment to the US Postal Services full functioning. And frankly, the failure to support that $25 billion in my mind under the circumstances can only be viewed as a question about whether folks actually want the US Postal Service to function during this period. And then there have been a number of decisions by the Postmaster General to do the appointed Postmaster General to, for example, decommission whole huge mail sorting machines to go after the realization that our mail carriers who are assigned routes and who are expected to deliver the mail timely on those routes. If they have overflows of mail, they are entitled to overtime for that. And the Postmaster General has gone after that and said, no, no, you can't do overtime. You come back and the mail gets delayed. We have also seen attempts to, you know, take away service in other areas, for example, the whole idea that when it comes to mailing out absentee mail ballots and returning them, that's considered first class mail. That goes faster. Postmaster General went after that. There have been other occurrences that the Postmaster General has proposed under the explanation of quote unquote improving US Postal Service. Now I think any government institution can stand to be improved. And the US Postal Service is having a tough time in the big picture financially was before 2020 and will after 2020. And so there are very difficult decisions to be made in the US Postal Service. And Congress, I believe, needs to participate with the Postal Service in making those decisions and helping out to preserve a Postal Service. But when you're in the middle of a crisis, a crisis that impedes the ability of the Postal Service to deliver, to start with critical deliveries, and then you add to that the critical importance of quote by mail, that's no time to be walking through these kinds of major reforms. You just got to get the job done, period. And so you add all of that up and you ask, well, what does this all mean? And to me, what it means is either or both of a complete lack of appreciation of the role of the US Postal Service in this crisis and in mail and voting, or frankly, a voter suppression approach, where there is a conscious effort to actually get less people to vote by mail than the maximum number of people to vote by mail. And I have you received communications from your constituents on their opinion in that question? My constituents are overwhelmingly supportive of the US Postal Service. I can say that in the last 72 hours this week, I've probably gotten 3,000 communications from my constituents. And I think the percentage of constituents who believe that the US Postal Service is under attack for the wrong reasons is somewhere in the range of 95 percent plus. Now, that means to me that this is a transcendent issue. These are not folks that all agree on who should be the next president. They don't all agree on which party has the better approach. But they all do understand that the US Postal Service is integral and they smell a little monkey business here. And so I feel the same way. So I'm completely aligned with my constituents on this. And I would also say that I think most Americans feel this way. So I think that this is an issue that many, many Americans, most Americans, I should say, throughout our country feel the same way. And so I'm hoping that the sum total of the outrage, really, in many cases over a systematic attempt to kind of handicap the US Postal Service in a critical time for probably the wrong reasons, is something that most Americans recognize and that will translate into Congress. And of course, we've seen the Postmaster General in the last 24 hours try to say that he is reversing course, although it was a completely insufficient answer. It doesn't sound like it's really going to change what he's already done. For example, he removed some 600 of these sorting machines. They're offline. They're disabled. It would really be hard to put Humpty back together again. And he hasn't even said that he would do that. I think all he said is I won't do any more of that. Same thing with removing the blue boxes off the street. He's removed about 100,000 of them across the country. And he said he won't do any more, but he won't return the ones he's taken away. So it really sounds like an empty promise, doesn't it? Well, it's exactly right. What the Postmaster General said yesterday was that he would, quote, unquote, suspend his actions. He did not say he would restore what he's already done. And that's a major concern because as you asked me at the very beginning of this show has damage already been done, while some damage has already been done. We have enough time to undo that damage between now and when absentee voting starts. And by the way, in many states in this country, absentee voting starts as soon as a couple of weeks from now. It actually starts in September in some states. And so time is of the essence. And you're correct that Postmaster General, when directly asked by congressional leadership if he was going to not just suspend what he was intending to do, but retroactively go back and correct what he already did, he completely stated very upfront, no, he does not intend to do that. And so that must come from a congressional that apparently if the president is not going to step in and instruct the Postmaster General or strongly urge the Postmaster General to reverse course, not only prospectively, but going back, if that's not going to happen, Congress has got to come in and and and do that. And in fact, that's what we have already done, as I said, in the United States House. But we're going to come back again and this weekend and pass out a standalone US Postal Service Bill that funds that 25 billion all over again and basically says we're going to revert across the board to the status quo as of January 1st of this year. So in other words, put those sorting machines back in place. Put those mailboxes back on the street. You know, the letter carriers need to get that mail out first class for for elections. And if if they if they're overloaded on their routes have to work extra. Yes, they do get paid over time to get that done. And that's what that's what it's going to take. And and our thought here is to some of the claims by by by some of the senators and the president are, well, that whole reform effort to fund the Postal Service is wrapped up in a much, much bigger package of a further emergency assistance to the country that that the House passed out. We refer to that as the Heroes Act and we passed that on May 15th over three months ago and for three months, it's been sitting in the Senate and the administration. It's under very active negotiation right now. I am very, very, you know, disturbed that we haven't asked that yet because there's, of course, critical need throughout our state and our country that the the cares act funding is can no longer address because it's basically been exhausted. But the claim is, well, the Postal Service is just one part of this big negotiation. And so it's kind of, you know, held up by the larger by the larger negotiations. And so we're going to say, we're not, we're not, we're not, we're not taking that we're going to we're going to pass a standalone bill. It's going to be clean. It's going to be simple. And here it is. Are you are you supportive or not? Because if you're supportive, then pass the bill, the president signs it. OK, we can undo most of the damage. If you're not supportive of this bill, then we have to assume that you share the same overall purpose to essentially handicap the US Postal Service in a critical time. Well, the Senate has jammed up everything you've done for the for the last three and a half years, really. Why would it change its mind now? Do you think it's under such pressure by its constituents, their constituents that they will relent on this? Because it seems to me is a fair chance they'll they'll pan it the way they pan everything from the house. Well, first of all, I don't want to I don't want to be I don't want to be the over the top in terms of kind of the everything statement because the fact of the matter is that we have worked with the Senate and the president to accomplish some things in the last couple of years, especially the last what has it been, 19, 20 months since I've been back in office. So, for example, we we did pass the CARES Act and the CARES Act was four separate pieces of legislation, all collectively referred to as the CARES Act, but each one of those pieces of legislation had to be negotiated out in advance and then went through quite easily and we did manage to pull that off. So that shows that it's possible when you have a united purpose and when you have great need. We have also, for example, funded the federal government in the normal course, we passed out our appropriations bills last year and knock on wood. And I'm a member of that committee, the Appropriations Committee. We are on track to do that again this year. So and there have been other areas in which we have reached the agreement, the Great American Outdoors Act, which was just passed and signed into law just a few weeks ago. A revolutionary once in a generation bill supporting our special places across the country. We got that done. So I don't want I don't I don't want to play this from a purely partisan or extreme, you know, they never do anything to you. I don't believe that. And I believe and perhaps I'm overly optimistic on it, but I do still believe that individual senators, primarily in the Republican Party, who are institutionally, at least the folks that are holding up on the funding here are hearing from their constituents. And I do believe that they understand that that look, we can disagree over even deeply, even to the point of a very passionate, even angry debate on policy. That's the role of government. That's where we try to have those debates. We can disagree as parties. We can disagree as House versus the Senate. We can disagree as Congress versus the president. And, you know, we can we can all be judged, judge and be judged at the at the at the at the voting booth every two years or four years or six years, depending on your term. And that's that's democracy. And that's all fine. But you have to have some basic foundations of your country that you leave alone and that those foundations are what the rest of it rests on. And and I hope that I hope that those senators who thus far have have not taken public issue with the administration's actions with respect to the U.S. Postal Service have somehow tried to defend it as well. We're just trying to kind of reform a kind of, you know, broken institution, et cetera, et cetera. I hope that they in their hearts come to the realization that there probably are purposes for all of this action with the U.S. Postal Service that challenge that basic foundation of the right to vote. Because, you know, we just lost John Lewis, my colleague, a couple of weeks back. He fought an entire lifetime over the right to vote. That was his mission, the right to vote. And to think that and to think that, you know, after all of these generations, all of these decades, we may still be seeing institutional voter suppression but on a massive scale from our federal government. That should be completely unacceptable to any American, especially in the U.S. United States senator. So I'm hopeful that the U.S. Senate will basically say to the president, look, you reverse course all the way around, or we're just going to agree with the House on this bill and send it to you and then you're going to have to decide whether to veto it or not. We're going to have to decide whether to override you. I hope it doesn't come back. That's another question he could veto it, even if the Senate agrees. So let me ask you and I'll be pessimistic here. Let's say the Senate doesn't agree or the Senate does agree. And, you know, we have a joint joint agreement between the two houses and Trump vetoes it. So we don't have the funding. We don't have the statement of support for the Postal Service. What happens then? Well, the Postal Service, the Postal Service, of course, is still ongoing, is still functioning. And the Postal Service is very used to handling high-volume spikes in mail. For example, of course, they handle our holiday seasons mail every December. So if you ask the Postal Service, they're going to say they're very concerned by these actions, but they're going to do their best. And chances are they will actually pull it off mostly. But take that mostly and compare it against, mostly is not good enough in the middle of a crisis if somebody doesn't get their medicine, if somebody doesn't get their social security materials or economic impact checks or whatever it might be or doesn't get to vote because their ballot doesn't get there in time and they feel unsafe going to the voting booth in person. That's not acceptable. So mostly it's not good enough. Number one, number two, we're going to all have to obviously adjust as much as possible to avoid any of that consequence. And that's going to mean ballots are going to have to get out there faster. People are going to have to vote earlier. There's going to be less margin of error if you don't follow the guidance on how to actually make your vote count. And that shouldn't be, it shouldn't be up to voters to be completely vigilant. Yes, of course we have that responsibility but our job as government is to make it as easy as possible. And that's what's going to be missing if we don't get this all in place. Yeah, we have several questions. Let me, I'm going to sort of ask them all together and you can deal with them as a bunch. One question or one viewer says, what can we do to fix this? I think you've already covered that in large part. Next question, this is really interesting. What can force the joy to restore the sorting machines before the election? That's hard on a practical basis. And the third question is, this is really interesting. Will Louis DeJoy, Louis DeJoy be charged for crimes and offenses under the constitution for having interfered with the mail? Any possibility of that? What can we all do? Well, I think the congressional delegation is pretty much on the same page with what I've said. I don't want to speak for my colleagues but I've certainly seen what they've said and it's very consistent with what I've said. So I think we're all with the program and we're all supportive of what I talked about, the 25 billion emergency appropriation and restoring things to the status quo as of January 1st of this year, that's what we want. So I welcome people writing into me to communicate or letting them know of my views and I will respond fully and I am responding fully as people write me, including those people by the way that disagree with me. So I try to explain the importance of this and many that I do communicate with to reconsider their position and try to view it in a non-partisan way. But frankly, if folks really want to help, if you've got friends and relatives that are in states that are represented by Republican senators in particular, you should write them and make sure that they contact their senators because that's direct grassroots influence of the political process and those senators listen to their own constituents and that's where the decision is gonna be made on this. In terms of restoring the equipment, I think that we have time to restore a fair bit of it. So we don't have unlimited time. So one would hope that both the postmaster general and the president would stand up today and say, no, we understand this is an emergency, we're gonna go out there and do it all. And these are the steps that we have to go through in order to get that done. In that case, we could probably remedy, as I said, most of the damage, but we'd have to start now to do that. And then in terms of charging the postmaster general, I just don't know how to make a judgment on that. I mean, in all honesty, as I looked at it today, I may disagree with him deeply on his actions and his policy, but I don't detect any impeachable criminal conduct actions. Now, I've been surprised before by administration officials who appeared to be acting within the broad scope of discretion that they have as administration officials when in fact, when you started to dig under the surface, there was some allegedly criminal conduct. And by the way, the postmaster general, of course, is subject to congressional oversight and has agreed thus far to come up to Congress to answer questions in official congressional oversight hearings as he should. I would be much more concerned if he, if he like other administration officials was instructed by the president not to come to Congress to explain the administration's actions, but no, I don't see that quite yet. Well, there you are in a situation which nobody would have anticipated. And it seems to get worse every day and threaten our democracy all the more. And I just, my last question, Ed, is how do you feel about that? You're a man of great character. We know that from your political career here in Hawaii and we fully appreciate it and we're behind you. But I just wonder how you feel about being in Congress now with all of these shenanigans going on? Deeply disappointed. I, to go back to a point that I made earlier, I think that there is a, I think that there is a, there is a zone for reasonable compromise and agreement in our country that is available. But people are scared to use it nowadays because somehow they think that this is such a deeply divided country that the mere action to compromise is viewed as a form of treachery by party loyalists on both sides. I'm not gonna excuse either party on this, by the way. And so that zone of agreement is still there. It is still my dream that it be utilized much more and I'm still optimistic that we can do so in the right environment, a less poisoned environment, a less political environment. And I am doing that in Congress and I found many, many fellow travelers, by the way, who feel exactly as I do that there's so much in this country that we can't actually find some reasonable middle ground compromise solution, whether it be immigration reform or foreign policy or healthcare, these are the big issues of our time. And there are solutions that would work for our country and that we could all pursue. It wouldn't be easy, but as we would devote ourselves to it and be given the rope really by our constituents to try to arrive at those agreements, we could get those done. Number what? Number two, there's a zone of disagreement, policy disagreement, just two paths in the road. And you kind of have to choose one or the other. And Congress is where that decision should be made. And I'm very comfortable with that role. I don't prefer for it to come down to such a binary choice because again, I think that most of these decisions, there's a zone of agreement that could be accomplished, but I have no problem with the great policy debate and I have no problem with making that binary choice when I have to and representing my constituents. What bothers me the most about this situation, the Postal Service is really the exhibit number one to that, but it's not the only exhibit, is a threat to the foundations of democracy. All of what I talked about rests again, I'll say it again, out of foundation. And we have very rarely have we seen such threats to the foundation where questions are raised as to whether democracy itself works. Questions are raised as to, as to whether the right to vote should be, maximized. And to me, that's the biggest danger that I see right now, that's the biggest disappointment that I have going back to Congress, because I want to assume those foundations and I want to protect those foundations and I want, I cherish them. And I think that without those foundations, we're going to drift. And so I want those foundations, I want to have that debate. I want to find those agreements and I want to vote one way or the other where that agreement is not possible. But again, the foundations are critical and that's where I think the US Postal Service situation that we find ourselves in, that's why I say it's a threat to democracy. At case, our congressman, we admire you. We respect and appreciate your work on behalf of Hawaii and we wish you all the best. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. Any contact from anybody, case.house.gov. Happy to answer your questions, hear your concerns and your opinion. I appreciate you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Ed. Aloha.