As Donald Trump prepares to resume his role as U.S. President in January, perhaps the most important work under his auspices will be that of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Americans are waiting with bated breath for audits of the Department of Defense, which just failed its seventh straight audit, and other federal agencies.
The mammoth job being undertaken by Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy, and their cohorts will surely include a stern review of “climate crisis” spending, much of it from the Biden-Harris $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) of 2021 that dwarfed the $831 billion from the Obama-Biden American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
The crown jewel of the 2009 law was the $535 million allocated to Solyndra, which all went down the tubes when the company declared bankruptcy shortly after paying its executives hefty bonuses and leaving its 1,100 employees without severance pay.
Open the Books chronicled a long list of other Obama-Biden green energy ripoffs, including $401 million to Abound Solar, $280 million to Calisolar, $193 million to Fisker Automotive, and $132 million to A123 Systems. A report from the Inspector General’s Office later found that the Department of Energy did not properly manage and approve Solyndra’s loan guarantee.
On the heels of the 2021 IIJA, Biden-Harris wangled another $370 billion for “renewable energy and climate resilience” spending out of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). It is these climate-focused bills, along with money spent to foment wars in Europe and the Middle East, that have ballooned the national debt and fueled runaway inflation – and likely led to the Trump victory.
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One example of wasteful federal spending under the IRA was a $3 billion supplemental appropriation to Oshkosh Defense to finalize the design and assemble 50,000 of the U.S. Post Office’s Next Generation Delivery Vehicles (NGDVs).
In February 2021, after a 3-year delay, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy had promised that the first NGDVs would be on carrier routes in 2023. That date was already years behind the initial goal to have new trucks during Trump’s first term. The USPS contracted with Oshkosh Defense, which announced in March 2022 that the initial order was for 50,000 NGDVs over a 10-year period at a cost of $2.9 billion.
The initial order included only 10,019 battery-electric vehicles, with the rest to be powered by traditional internal combustion engines. The goal was to get the cheaper to build ICE vehicles into post offices quickly to replace aging Grumman vehicles that lacked modern-day safety measures and conveniences, most notably air conditioning.
But once the $3 billion in IRA funding was approved, that initial order was changed to 35,000 BEVs and just 15,000 ICE vehicles, with the priority reversed to build the BEVs first. That extra money was sparked by protests from “green” groups that the USPS should not buy ANY ICE vehicles and federal “logic” that the $3 billion in taxpayer funds – which seemingly doubles the cost per vehicle -- would make the BEV NGDVs “more affordable” (for the government, not the taxpayer).
Sadly, as reported in The Washington Post, as of December 11, 2024, only 93 of the scheduled 3,000 all-electric NGDVs had been delivered. The shortfall is reminiscent of the report last March by the Post that only seven electric-vehicle charging stations had been put in place nearly two years after Congress allocated $7.5 billion to vastly expand the public charging network.
While the taxpayer is further subsidizing these new postal vehicles for an agency that lost $9.5 billion (but “just” $1.8 billion in “controllable” costs) in fiscal 2024, the real cost over the 30-year lifespan traditional with postal vehicles will be much, much higher – largely from battery replacement costs. Worse, mail carriers will have longer waits for their new vehicles.
The arguments for an all-electric postal fleet included that BEVs are perfect for delivering mail, given that the stop-and-go driving allows the use of regenerative braking and that the trucks all return to their charging stations at the end of each shift. Some pointed to older ICE vehicles catching fire (without mentioning that BEV fires are much more difficult to contain).
Back in March, however, Michael O. Foster, Director of the Motor Vehicle Craft Division of the American Postal Workers Union, acknowledged that “there are positives and negatives to having a fleet of electric vehicles.” He cited the greater stress on the electric grid as a major negative. Charging stations, he added, take up space and can affect parking, but with fewer moving parts there could be a reduction in maintenance requirements for NGDV BEVs.
Foster also said that the mailbox-to-mailbox type of delivery does not fully utilize the vehicle’s ability to put electricity back into the battery while braking. Moreover, these BEVs have an 8-hour charge time with a range of about 200 miles and “should primarily be used on park and loop routes where box to box delivery isn’t required.”
Speculation is already rampant that the second Trump Administration may take a long look at the USPS contracts and recommend major changes. One faction wants to privatize the postal service altogether, a move that could lead to an entirely new funding mechanism for delivering mail to American homes and businesses.
At a recent press conference, Trump said that taking the Postal Service private is “an idea that a lot of people have liked for a long time.” Indeed, the first Trump Administration had created a task force to recommend a pathway to put the money-losing agency on firmer financial footing, but opposition from Congress killed that initiative.
The White House in 2018, though, said that a privatized Postal Service “would have a substantially lower cost structure, be able to adapt to changing customer needs and make business decisions free from political interference and have access to private capital markets to fund operational improvements without burdening taxpayers.”
As badly as taxpayers have been abused during the Biden years, removing some of those burdens would be a welcome change.
Duggan Flanakin is a senior policy analyst at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow who writes on a wide variety of public policy issues.
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