U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy covered his ears during a tense exchange with Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) on Tuesday in protest as the two sparred about the efficiency of the Postal Service.
DeJoy addressed members of the House Oversight Committee during a hearing about the efficiency of the USPS when McCormick ripped the agency. The Georgia Republican said the USPS had tanked its reputation in recent years, specifically under DeJoy’s leadership.
McCormick explained his recent negative experiences in sending letters and laid into DeJoy:
Almost every single business I know that wants to send a check out won’t use the U.S. Postal Service anymore. I won’t use the U.S. Postal Service anymore. That’s on your watch. The two major decisions I’ve seen you make, which is on the distribution centers and on employee rate hiring, have done nothing to mitigate this in real-time ways. I don’t understand why you give yourself an A Grade, as you just stated when it comes to the delivery we have.[…]Your reputation is done. Whether you admit it or not, in the military, if I have a skipper who things are going bad for, they’re a good military officer. But you know what we do when things go wrong repeatedly? We relieve them. You know what you do when a CEO repeatedly fails in that business model falls apart? Nobody wants to use that
business anymore, and it becomes non-profitable. You fire them. You know what we do in government when organizations fail over and over and over again and become unaccountable and are not going in the right direction.
As McCormick continued to criticize DeJoy, the postmaster general covered his ears and said, “You’re talking to yourself.”
The lawmaker mocked DeJoy by covering his own ears and stated, “I hope you got that on camera. This is the response that the postmaster just gave Congress. When he doesn’t like what he hears. Literally covered his ears and gave himself the grade of A.”
McCormick concluded he would yield his time to which DeJoy replied, “Good.”
Watch above via C-SPAN.