Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Representative Michael Cloud (R-TX) are seeking to reclaim $3 billion earmarked for establishing an electric vehicle fleet for the United States Postal Service (USPS) under former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. The two Republican lawmakers, members of the Congressional DOGE Caucus, are set to introduce legislation to claw back the Biden-era funding.
The proposed legislation, known as the “Return to Sender Act,” comes in response to a reported delay in the delivery of the USPS electric vehicles. As of last November, only 93 out of a planned 60,000 vehicles had been delivered by defense contractor Oshkosh. The contractor had an agreement with the Postal Service to produce an initial order of 50,000 electric delivery trucks over a three-year period.
Oshkosh is believed to be struggling with the production of the electric Postal Service vehicles, with insiders claiming the contractor is uncertain it can build the trucks effectively under the terms of the former Biden government’s contract. Furthermore, rising costs have compounded the project’s delays.
Consequently, the delay and production issues have prompted Ernst and Cloud to seek the reappropriation of funds, approximately 30 percent of the total appropriation designed to tackle inflation under President Biden’s initiative. “The order needs to be canceled with the unspent money returned to sender, the taxpayers. I am defunding this billion-dollar boondoggle to stamp out waste in Washington,” Sen. Ernst said in a statement announcing the legislative measure aimed at clawing back the appropriation.
Meanwhile, Rep. Cloud stated: “Three years later, taxpayers are still waiting while the Postal Service refuses to provide basic transparency on where the money went. The Return to Sender Act takes back the $3 billion in taxpayer money that has been wasted in this project.”
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