During the Biden administration, both Biden and Kamala Harris made it clear they wanted to push national fleets to all-electric as a way to push their green agenda.
One of the programs was to completely revamp the USPS fleet with electric vehicles (EVs), as well as school buses, which seemed to be a passion for Harris.
Well, reports broke this weekend that the plans are going to be scrapped by the GOP.
In December 2022, the Biden-Harris administration announced a nearly $10 billion investment to change out the USPS fleet.
In part, the order stated, “Today, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) announced an historic, $9.6 billion investment over the next five years to electrify its delivery fleet. The USPS investment includes electrifying 75% of its new purpose-built Next Generation Delivery Vehicles (NGDV) and a commitment to acquire 100% electric NGDVs starting in 2026.”
It continued, “This $9.6 billion investment – which includes $3 billion in funding from the Inflation Reduction Act – installs modern charging infrastructure at hundreds of USPS facilities, electrifies 66,000 delivery vehicles, and modernizes mail delivery by creating a smarter network to more efficiently reach its 163 million delivery locations across the country and further strengthen the sustainability of this critical public service.”
Needless to say, the GOP was not exactly thrilled with the massive investment, but there was nothing that could be done at the time.
Harris more or less became the point person on this, later announcing a massive rebate program for schools that converted fleets to EVs.
Harris’s office stated that “nearly $1 billion in total awards from the EPA's Clean School Bus program to deliver 2,468 electric and low-emission buses to school districts across all 50 states, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and a number of tribal run or tribal serving schools.”
White House senior adviser and infrastructure coordinator Mitch Landrieu added, "The vast majority of those buses, 95% will be purely electric."
As part of the recent spending bill, the GOP tried to sell off the USPS’s EV fleet and pull back the rest of the money, but the Senate Parliamentarian blocked the effort.
The GOP, however, has not given up, as Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) is about to introduce legislation that will do what they tried to do in the spending bill, saying that this program was “a textbook example of waste.”
She added, “You always evaluate the programs, see if they are working. But the rate at which the company that’s providing those vehicles is able to produce them, they are so far behind schedule, they will never be able to fulfill that contract.”
Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX) added that the program “has delivered nothing but delays, defective trucks, and skyrocketing costs.”
Democrats are pushing back, making it quite clear that if they get back into power, the program will be resumed. What I found truly amusing was that their argument was in how much money the GOP was wasting by ending this program, when the Dems will just pick it back up again. Kind of reminds me of what Democrats did to the wall, wasting all that funding when they knew if Trump got back into office, the project would be restored.
