The U.S. Post Office leader said in a letter to lawmakers Thursday that they have reached an agreement with Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team, which allows them to help “identify and achieve further efficiency.”
The post office has long struggled with its finances, and both Musk and President Trump have suggested that it should be privatized. But Musk’s government efficiency bureau, Cost Reduction Group, has not targeted approximately 635,000 workers in the postal service.
Postmaster Louis DeJoy, who gained his position during the first President Trump and moved to reduce the agency’s ranks during the Biden administration, said he signed an agreement with Musk’s group on Wednesday.
Republican mega-donor DeJoy wrote that Musk’s initiative was “attempted” in his efforts.
He said the post office workforce will shrink by 30,000 from fiscal year 2021, and the agency plans to complete “an additional 10,000 cuts over the next 30 days” through a previously established voluntary retirement program.
Last week, Musk said at a technology conference hosted by Morgan Stanley Bank that post offices should be privatized, declaring that “what can reasonably be privatized should be privatized.”
Trump proposed privatizing independent agencies and merging them with the Commerce Department. Union officials and Democrats were wary of privatization talks, arguing that such a move would hurt workers, raise prices and disproportionately damage rural services.
The agreement DeJoy explained on Thursday was relatively undestructive, but it sparked harsh responsibilities from Virginia Representative Gerald E. Connolly, a ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform overseeing postal services.
Connolly said in a statement that the deal also brings “all Americans, especially those in rural and difficult-to-reach areas, relying on the post office every day.”
Connolly said in a statement the “only bad thing for the post office” would be if the agency was handed over to Musk so that it could be “weakened, privatized, and benefited from the loss of Americans.”
In his letter, the Post Officer General argued that the service had been converted in recent years from the “bureaucracy of government” that had been on the verge of financial collapse into an institution that “experiences an unprecedented period of growth and innovation.”
“Our strategy is focused on maintaining a remodeled, yet sustainable, universal service mission that is still creditable today and that could become financially self-sufficient to the changes we are pursuing.
Postal services were once a cabinet-level division of government, but became an independent institution under President Richard Nixon. In 2021, the agency reported losing $87 billion over the past 14 years.
Brian L. Renflow, president of the National Association of Letters, said in an interview Thursday that he was “skeptical of Doge.”
But Renfroe said Musk’s team has not yet “anything to issue a big alarm.”
“We’re in meeting mode,” he said, adding that the new cuts in postal services “will provide the services we offer every day when it becomes a near-direct challenge.”
