What Katie Porter taught us at the DeJoy hearing
Opinion by
Columnist
August 25, 2020 at 8:30 a.m. CDT
Rep.
Katie Porter (D-Calif.) has a well-earned reputation for slicing and dicing
administration witnesses who lack knowledge of their departments or agencies.
Considering
that the Trump administration favors cronies over experts and loyalty over
competence, Porter has had many opportunities to demonstrate her interrogation
skills.
Monday
was no different as she faced the beleaguered postmaster general,
Louis DeJoy.
She did
what every questioner should do: Ask short questions seeking facts, follow up,
cut off filibustering by the witness and eschew speeches. Her aim Monday was
plainly to let Americans see that DeJoy was a political crony with little
knowledge of the organization he is running. And boy did she:
DeJoy
does not know basic facts about postal prices or even about voting by mail.
“I’m glad you know the price of a stamp, but I am concerned about your
understanding of this agency,” Porter said matter-of-factly. “And I am
particularly concerned about it because you started taking very decisive action
when you became postmaster general.
You
started directing the unplugging and destroying of machines, changing of
employee procedures and locking of collection boxes.” When asked about the
changes under his watch that have impacted service, he insisted they were not
his and he did not know who was responsible.
What
Porter and several of her House and Senate colleagues demonstrated is that
DeJoy either does not grasp or cannot execute the mission of the U.S. Postal
Service. That mission is not to make money or even to make the agency more
efficient. (At one point, DeJoy said fewer rural deliveries would make the
postal service more efficient.) The mission is to provide a reliable service
specified in the Constitution that the framers understood was vital to the
nation’s well-being.
DeJoy,
right at home in this administration, never seems to take responsibility for
much of anything. The Post reports:
In
several instances, he blamed middle management for changes that happened under
his watch — or even for taking steps he didn’t even know about.
“Are
you certain that no one was cutting back on overtime?” Rep. Mike Quigley
(D-Ill.) asked DeJoy at one point.
“No, I’m not certain.
That’s part of the problem at the Postal Service,” DeJoy responded.
DeJoy
seems intent on making more efficient an organization that he knows little
about without examining the effects on actual people. (“As he did in testimony
before the Senate last week, DeJoy defended the changes he’s put in place since
taking over the agency in mid-June — while insisting that he was not
responsible for the most controversial developments, including reduction of
overtime and dismantling of some mail-sorting machines.”)
Porter’s
questioning was instructive in several respects.
First,
grilling administration witnesses about whether they explicitly received
direction from President Trump is a waste of time. These appointees get their
jobs because they understand what Trump wants. If there is any confusion, they
read the president’s daily tweets.
Second,
asking witnesses to confess to corrupt motives is also futile. The best you can
do is establish the lack of qualifications and any donations the appointees
made to Trump.
You
don’t have to be a rocket scientist, for example, to figure out that Gordon
Sondland, a former ambassador to the European Union who had no diplomatic
experience, got the job because he donated $1 million to
Trump’s inaugural committee.
Finally,
she has aptly underscored the degree to which the Trump administration cares
not one wit about good governance. It is a government designed to serve Trump’s
grudges and conspiratorial paranoia while allowing cronies to feather their own
nests.
After
failing so miserably at his job and revealing how little qualified he is for
the job, DeJoy, one might hope, would resign out of shame. But this, remember,
is an administration without apologies or regrets. Just lots of scandals.
