Floor Remarks by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa
Senate President Pro Tempore
“United States Postal Service Mail Carriers”
Thursday, October 9, 2025
Once again, in the chaplain’s prayer, he brought up the issue before the United States Senate and presented it to the Lord about the problems created by the shutdown of the government.
Not only are the employees of the United States Senate not being paid, 750,000 civil servants are furloughed without pay.
But we’re also beginning to read in business pages of the newspapers about the impact on the economy.
And for the state of Iowa, the White House [Counsel of Economic Advisors] said that weekly, it was doing damage to the economy of my state of Iowa, by $137 [million].
So, we’re trying to get the government back to work, because it costs money to shut the government down. It costs money to open the government up.
The government is supposed to be a service to the American people, besides protecting the American people. And quite frankly, none of that can be done when it’s shut down.
I come to the floor today to speak about some information that I got from whistleblowers [for]the first time [on] September 23 last year. At that time, I spoke to my fellow senators, making public very concerning whistleblower allegations.
The whistleblower alleged to my office that the Postal Service, which is an independent government agency, had hired registered sex offenders as mail carriers.
So, I investigated to find out how bad this problem was at that agency.
To date, the Postal Service has refused to provide a list of names of registered sex offenders.
The Postal Service has provided some information about the number of sex offenders working at the Postal Service.
On July 7, 2025, the Postal Service confirmed that in 2024 the agency employed 150 registered sex offenders.
The letter said of the 150, 102 had “access to the public.”
Of the 102, 77 were mail carriers.
News even more alarming in that letter [was that] the Postal Service doesn’t track the routes used by employees who are registered sex offenders.
We don’t even know the locations where these carriers deliver their mail.
The Postal Service also doesn’t track the crimes that led to an employee’s registration on the sex offender registry.
On August 7, 2025, I wrote the Postal Service requesting additional information.
So, this is what I want to know about how the Postal Service ensures our communities are safe and what the crimes were, and that’s just among other questions I have.
To date, I’ve received no response.
When it comes to this matter, our communities deserve much better than what they’re getting from the Postal Service, and we’ve got to make sure that the Postal Service is as protective of people’s safety as any other agency of government.
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