Senate Supermajority Needed to Abandon USPS Electrification Initiatives

      Oshkosh Defense

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      Congress and the administration have encountered another obstacle in their efforts to eliminate the Postal Service’s electrification mandate. According to a procedural advisor in the Senate, Congress cannot simply overturn the EV mandate with a simple majority vote, which is likely to lead to the matter being addressed in separate legislation rather than as part of the tax and spending bill currently under review. Due to a provision in the initial legislation, Senate Republicans will need to secure a 60-vote supermajority to dismantle the mandate—a challenging task in a chamber where their majority is slim.

      Moreover, this move is not being requested by anyone—especially not by the Postal Service, which has cautioned lawmakers that reversing the initiative now would waste taxpayer dollars. The cost to replace the current EVs is estimated at around $1 billion, with nearly half spent on vehicles already delivered and additional costs arising from contracts for undelivered vehicles. Ceasing the newly installed charging infrastructure would result in a loss of $500 million from recent investments.

      Furthermore, a reversal would significantly hinder USPS's ongoing efforts to replace its outdated delivery vehicle fleet, a goal they have pursued since the early days of the Trump administration. The original legislation included provisions for more than 160,000 new delivery vans, with only 10% of these expected to be electric under the initial terms.

      After taking office in 2020, the Biden administration urged Congress to strive for a higher proportion of electric vehicles. A new formula was introduced, raising the minimum order of electric vans to 45,000 (a 300% increase) and including nearly 10,000 electric Ford E-Transit vans in addition to that number. Consequently, the vehicles set to be added to the USPS fleet in 2025 will be nearly evenly divided between electric and internal combustion engines; beginning in 2026, they will be entirely electric. The updated replacement timeline aims to complete the entire $10 billion plan by 2028.

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