PATERSON, NJ – U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-09) today reacted harshly to the sudden resignation of David Williams, the Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors for the United States Postal Service (USPS).

“If political pressure played a role in the sudden departure of David Williams, it is an ominous storm cloud over the head of our postal service,” said Rep. Pascrell, one of Congress’s leading champions of USPS. “As one of the most respected leaders of the USPS and a longtime advocate of postal empowerment and postal banking, Williams’ leadership is desperately needed to guide the post office through what may be its most precarious moment in modern times. Congress must investigate the circumstances here and guard against Donald Trump’s efforts to use this pandemic to decapitate one of our nation’s crown jewels and endanger the USPS’s over 600,000 employees.”

Rep. Pascrell has been a leader in Congress demanding reform to return the USPS to its former glory and strengthen it so it remains an integral part of American life, goals he outlined in a well-received April 2019 essay in Washington Monthly. Pascrell is a cosponsor of H.R. 2382, the USPS Fairness Act that would finally remove the health care prefunding anchor that has been strangling USPS since 2007. Pascrell is also a strong supporter of widespread postal banking, and in June 2019 his bipartisan amendment allocating $1 million to begin funding a postal banking system was passed by the House of Representatives.