United States Postal Service Postmaster Common Louis DeJoy speaks throughout a Home Oversight and Reform Committee listening to on Legislative Prop
United States Postal Service Postmaster Common Louis DeJoy speaks throughout a Home Oversight and Reform Committee listening to on Legislative Proposals to Put the Postal Service on Sustainable Monetary Footing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on February 24, 2021.
Jim Watson | AFP | Getty Photographs
Home Democrats known as on the Biden administration Tuesday to halt the U.S. Postal Service’s $482 million contract with Oshkosh Protection to assist modernize the service’s ageing fleet of supply vans till an investigation can show there was no “inappropriate political affect” within the award.
Three Democratic Home lawmakers — Reps. Marcy Kaptur and Tim Ryan of Ohio and California Rep. Jared Huffman — launched a decision that might place a maintain on the contract till an investigation is performed. Kaptur mentioned in a press release that the probe would additionally decide whether or not the contract is “according to the President’s Government Order to affect the federal fleet.”
The USPS introduced on Feb. 23 that it awarded the primary a part of the 10-year, multi-billion greenback contract to replace the postal supply automobile fleet to Oshkosh Protection. Shares of Workhorse Group, an Ohio-based electrical automobile firm that was competing for the contract, dropped by almost 50% the subsequent day and have barely recovered since then. The shares jumped by virtually 8% Tuesday, buying and selling at round $16.70 in afternoon buying and selling.
Below the contract, Oshkosh would make as much as 165,000 postal autos over the subsequent decade, making up roughly a 3rd of the federal authorities’s fleet, in keeping with the announcement. Nevertheless, USPS chief Louis DeJoy not too long ago instructed lawmakers that solely 10% of the brand new fleet can be electrical, which “can be inconsistent” with President Joe Biden’s efforts to affect your complete federal fleet, the lawmakers mentioned.
In accordance with the assertion, lawmakers are additionally involved about studies of “suspicious” inventory trades that have been positioned simply hours earlier than USPS chief Louis DeJoy introduced the deal.
“Ten % is mindless and flies within the face of President Biden’s current order to affect the federal fleet.,” mentioned Kaptur, who chairs the Home Appropriations Subcommittee on Power and Water Growth and co-chairs the Home Auto Caucus.
Shares of Oshkosh remained comparatively unchanged Tuesday afternoon.
— CNBC’s Pippa Stevens contributed to this report.