Hawley Presses Postmaster General for Accountability for Undelivered Mail in Missouri

Hawley Presses Postmaster General for Accountability for Undelivered Mail in Missouri

Wednesday, June 24, 2026

WASHINGTON - Today, U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) grilled the Postmaster General of the United States Postal Service, David P. Steiner, in a Senate Homeland Security hearing over his agency's dismal service and untimely mail delivery in Missouri. Senator Hawley also questioned why Postmaster General Steiner has accepted large bonuses for himself while Missourians' mail fails to be delivered.

Senator Hawley began, pointing to a poster behind him, "I want to show you a picture, if I could, just to start. This is North St. Louis, Missouri. This is April 29 of this year. This is right around North Taylor Avenue. This is a pile of mail, thousands of pieces of mail, tax documents, prescription drugs, bills, utility communications from companies, thousands and thousands of documents. As you might imagine, the residents of St. Louis, when this was discovered on April 29 were absolutely outraged, not least because the mail has been slow and not delivered and missing targets for years now, and here we have thousands of pieces of mail. Some of the postmarks here, this wasn't going across the country, you have letters here that were just going across town that had been dumped in this pile. Now the postal service promised the public and me, when this was discovered, that there be a full accounting of this, we would find out what happened, and we have a full and total investigation and complete transparency. And since that time, I've heard nothing. That was April. I've heard nothing. What's the answer?"

Steiner responded, "My answer would be, when you put up that in front of me, I'm outraged. And I think everybody in the postal service that that bleeds postal view blue would be outraged."

"That was months ago. What have you done since then?" Hawley asked.

"This is the first time I've heard about it," Steiner said.

He questioned, "How is this possibly the first time you've heard about it…Listen, I get thousands of pieces of mail a week about the post office, people's mail not being delivered. Here it is in a pile, and you're telling me this first time you've heard about it."

Senator Hawley continued, "Your targets for on time delivery in my state, which were not good to begin with, are just in the 90s, meaning you could miss it 10% of the time and give yourself an A grade, but start looking there in 2024, 2025. You're hitting your on time delivery targets 76% of the time maybe. That means fully a quarter of the time, best case scenario, people's mail in my state is not being delivered to them on time. Is this acceptable?"

"It's absolutely not acceptable," Steiner conceded.

"Just last year, the inspector general, when I asked him to do an audit of the St. Louis distribution center, the Inspector General told me it was the worst case of lack of on-time delivery, the worst case of distribution problems he had ever seen, ever, in an audit that he had done, ever. What's been changed since then?" Hawley demanded.

"If you look at the service door, I would commend you to go online. We publish our services-" Steiner said.

"No, I don't want to go online. I want you to come here with answers because you're the Postmaster General of the United States…the other thing I want to know, is why are you getting bonuses, and members of your staff getting bonuses for this kind of performance. Let's take a look, just look at the numbers. The Postmaster Generals of this country, in the last 10 years have gotten bonuses over $2 million. You got a bonus last year, $305,781. Why? Why are you getting bonuses when my constituents can't get the mail?" Senator Hawley asked.

"Senator, I don't control bonuses," Steiner responded.

Hawley shot back, "Will you refuse bonuses until the mail gets delivered? Yes or no?"

"What mail?" Steiner asked.

"I am absolutely astounded at this today, General…and, frankly, if things don't get better, you ought to resign, because you're not doing the job. You're leaving your good postal workers out there. You're hanging them out to dry. They don't make near what you do. They're working their butts off, they're getting blamed, and you're getting the bonus. We got a big problem. Based on what I've seen today, you're part of it," concluded Senator Hawley.

Watch the full exchange here.

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