US House supports election cash boost

The US House of Representatives has passed a bill according to which $25bn (£19bn) will be injected into the Postal Service (USPS) before the US election 2020. 

The bill would block cuts and changes that critics claim will hinder mail-in voting. President Donald Trump said in a tweet that the move was a Democrat ballot scam.

“Representatives of the Post Office have repeatedly stated that they DO NOT NEED MONEY, and will not make changes,” he has warned to veto the bill.

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said the chamber would “absolutely not pass” the bill.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy earlier said that the officials would suspend further cost-cutting measures at the postal service until after November’s election.

President Trump has opposed mail-in ballots and has warned that it could result in widespread voter fraud despite the unavailability of evidence. 

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According to the international news agency, The “Delivering for America Act” passed by the House in a rare Saturday sitting includes $25bn of emergency coronavirus funding requested by the USPS’s board of governors.

Several Republicans voted with their Democratic opponents. 

BBC reported that The service would be prohibited until January 2021 from implementing or approving any changes to operations or service levels that would “impede prompt, reliable, and efficient service”, including closing or reducing the hours of post offices, removing mail sorting machines and mailboxes, or stopping overtime payments.

“This is not a partisan issue,” Democratic Representative Carolyn Maloney, the bill’s author, said before the debate. “It makes absolutely no sense to impose these kinds of dangerous cuts in the middle of a pandemic and just months before the elections in November.”

 Miss Nancy Pelosi said, “While we always want to subject every federal dollar to the scrutiny of what we’re getting for it, let us remember that it is a service. No business that I can think of would ever be saddled with what we’ve done to the Postal Service.”