Senate Supermajority Required to Scrap USPS Electrification Plans
The latest car news, reviews, and features.
Congress and the administration have hit yet another speed bump in their attempt to overturn the Postal Service's electrification mandate. Congress cannot toss out the EV mandate with a simple majority vote in the Senate, the body's procedural supervisor said Sunday, which will likely result in the issue being pushed in separate legislation, rather than as part of the tax and spending bill currently being evaluated by Congress. Thanks to a provision in the original legislation, Senate Republicans will have to find support for a 60-vote supermajority in order to overturn the mandate—a tall order in a chamber where they hold only a slim majority.
And the kicker? Nobody's asking for this—at least nobody at the Postal Service itself, which has warned lawmakers that reversing the process now will only waste taxpayer money. Replacing existing EVs would cost the service approximately $1 billion—nearly half of that for vehicles already delivered, plus the cost of contracts for vehicles that have not yet been delivered. Mothballing the charging system that was just installed would mean writing off $500 million in recent investment.
On top of all that, an about-face would set USPS back significantly in its ongoing effort to replace its ancient fleet of delivery vehicles, which the service has been trying to do since the first Trump administration. The original bill included provisions for adding more than 160,000 new delivery vans. Only 10% of the new vehicles added to the USPS fleet would have been electric under the original terms of the legislation.
The Biden administration asked Congress to aim for a higher EV share after being elected in 2020. A new formula increased the minimum order of electric vans to 45,000 (a 300% increase) and baked in an order for nearly 10,000 electric Ford E-Transit vans on top of that allocation. As a result, vehicles being added to the USPS fleet in 2025 are split almost evenly between EV and ICE; from 2026 on, they would be exclusively electric. The revised replacement schedule would see the entire $10 billion plan completed by 2028.
Got a tip? Send it our way at tips@thedrive.com.
.article-sidebar]:pt-0>
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Fox News
19 minutes ago
- Fox News
Caroline Downey warns Iran 'cannot keep crossing the red line'
All times eastern FOX News Radio Live Channel Coverage WATCH LIVE: Senate convenes over President Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill'
Fox News
19 minutes ago
- Fox News
Liz Claman warns Mamdani is 'deflecting' anti-Israel stance with affordability campaign promises
All times eastern FOX News Radio Live Channel Coverage WATCH LIVE: Senate convenes over President Trump's 'Big, Beautiful Bill'
Yahoo
22 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump threatens Senate Republicans who defy him as Elon Musk attacks ‘utterly insane' megabill
President Donald Trump threatened Senate Republicans who defy him and his 'Big, Beautiful Bill' as the legislation cleared a key test vote in a dramatic night in the upper chamber of Congress. After negotiations dragged on for hours Saturday evening, the Senate voted 51 to 49 to open a debate on the legislation, moving one step closer to landing the bill on Trump's desk by his self-imposed Fourth of July deadline. Trump targeted Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who voted against opening the debate after he argued the package would 'result in tens of billions of dollars in lost funding' for his state. The president said 'numerous people have come forward wanting to run' in a primary election against Tillis, Trump wrote on Truth Social after returning to the White House to watch senators scramble for votes. 'I will be meeting with them over the coming weeks, looking for someone who will properly represent the Great People of North Carolina,' Trump said. Before votes were underway, Trump's 'first buddy' Elon Musk momentarily re-entered politics when he attacked the bill as 'utterly insane and destructive' in a post on X. The world's wealthiest man said the bill will 'destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country' and give 'handouts to industries of the past while severely damaging industries of the future.' The motion to proceed with the legislation — which includes sweeping spending cuts to pay for Trump's tax cuts he signed into law in 2017, as well as increased spending for the military, oil exploration, and immigration enforcement — came down to the wire, as Vice President JD Vance showed up at the last moment in the event of a tie break. Senate Republicans scrambled for sufficient support to pass the motion to proceed with votes on the mammoth bill. Final text for the sprawling 940-page bill was released Friday evening. Budget analysts predict the bill — if approved — could explode the national debt by more than $4 trillion. The bill's tax cuts would amount to $4.5 trillion in lost revenue, according to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation. If the bill does pass the Senate, it will return to the House of Representatives, which passed it last month. But plenty of House Republicans have objected to the Senate's changes, teeing up yet another legislative battle over Trump's massive bill. Trump lobbied senators on Saturday while playing golf with Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Democrats would object to the bill moving forward without the text being read on the Senate floor. 'We will be here all night if that's what it takes to read it,' he said Saturday. Reading the nearly 1,000-page bill on the floor is estimated to take 15 hours. Republicans, who have 53 seats in the Senate, plan to pass the bill using the process of budget reconciliation. That would allow them to sidestep a filibuster from Democrats as long as the legislation relates to the budget. For the past week, the Senate parliamentarian's office has issued advisories about which parts do not comply with the rules of reconciliation. The biggest sticking point was major changes to Medicaid, with Republicans proposing the steepest cuts to the federal healthcare program in history. The legislation would add work requirements for certain Medicaid recipients and limit how much money states can tax health care providers like hospitals and nursing homes to raise money for Medicaid. But the American Hospital Association said this would devastate rural hospitals that rely on Medicaid dollars. The parliamentarian removed the provider tax provision, but the new version of the bill simply delays when the cap goes into effect. Hospitals in House Speaker Mike Johnson's home state of Louisiana were compelled to write to him Saturday to warn that the Medicaid cuts 'would be historic in their devastation.' Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, also warned that the bill would cut funding for Medicaid by $930 billion, citing an upcoming Congressional Budget Office analysis. Wyden accused Republican senators of pushing a 'rushed and reckless' process. 'Just as before, these cruel cuts to Americans' health care will strike a mortal blow to rural health care, and threaten the health and safety of kids, seniors, Americans with disabilities, and working families across the country,' he wrote. Tillis, who hails from a state with a large number of rural hospitals and that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act in 2023, said he was a 'no' on the motion to proceed because of Medicaid. 'It will cause a lot of people to have to be moved off of Medicaid,' he told The Independent Friday evening. 'It's just inescapable. The price tag's too high.' Tillis, who is up for re-election in 2028, outlined his opposition to the bill again on Saturday, saying in a statement that the bill would 'result in tens of billions of dollars in lost funding' for his state, including hospitals and rural communities. 'This will force the state to make painful decisions like eliminating Medicaid coverage for hundreds of thousands in the expansion population, and even reducing critical services for those in the traditional Medicaid population,' he added. The bill would see Trump gain some $350 billion to pursue his anti-immigration agenda, including $46 billion for the U.S.– Mexico border wall and another $45 billion to build capacity to detain another 100,000 people in immigration detention centers. In order to meet his goal of deporting some 1 million people per year, the bill would also allocate money to hire 10,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, with $10,000 signing bonuses and a surge of border patrol agents. The legislation, which contains roughly $3.8 trillion in tax cuts, would extend the 2017 cuts that Trump signed into law during his first administration, which are set to expire at the end of the year. The existing tax rates and brackets would become permanent under the bill. The bill also would include some measures Trump campaigned on, including up to $25,000 in deductions on tipped wages and $12,500 for overtime pay through 2028. Americans who receive food stamps through the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP, would face new 'hardship' under the current legislation as billions would be slashed from the scheme, advocacy groups warn. The bill increases the age at which 'able-bodied' adults without dependent children must work to receive food assistance from 54 to 64 years old, the year before many seniors become eligible for Social Security and Medicare. It also would mandate that parents with children 14 and older must work at least 20 hours per week to receive SNAP benefits. 'Already, states like Texas have opted out of programs like Summer EBT and denying thousands of children critical food benefits during the summer because of concerns over state obligations to cover SNAP benefit costs,' the Food Research and Action Center warned. 'It's unimaginable the number of children who would miss out on the nutrition they need if this harmful bill is passed.' Rep. Angie Craig of Minnesota, the ranking Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee, previously told The Independent that changes to SNAP in the House version of the bill 'may be one of the most egregious items in the entire markup.'
