EXCLUSIVE: Hawley expands USPS probe with blistering letter accusing chief of dodging Congress

Josh Hawley wants to know why the guy running the Postal Service can't seem to answer a straightforward question from a United States Senator, and honestly, that's a fair thing to want to know. When you're bleeding money the way USPS has been for years, and you're paying a consulting firm like Alvarez & Marsal millions of dollars to tell you how to fix it, Congress asking for details isn't harassment. It's the job.

Steiner's dodge routine is the part that should bother people regardless of party. This isn't some abstract policy dispute about postal rates or delivery schedules. It's a basic accountability question: where is the money going, and why won't you say? An agency that loses billions and then hires outside consultants at a premium ought to be able to explain the arrangement in plain English to the people who oversee its budget. Silence just makes the whole thing look worse than whatever the actual answer turns out to be.

There's also a broader pattern here worth naming. Federal agencies have gotten very comfortable treating oversight letters as optional homework, something to acknowledge eventually, maybe, if the political weather cooperates. Hawley expanding this probe instead of letting it fade is the right instinct. Institutions that stop answering to elected officials stop being accountable to voters, full stop, and the USPS has been sliding in that direction for a while now.

None of this requires assuming the worst about Alvarez & Marsal or Steiner personally. Maybe there's a boring, defensible explanation for all of it. But "trust us, no comment" isn't an answer, it's a decision to stonewall, and taxpayers footing the bill deserve better than that.