The electric dreams of Democrats just got deleted, courtesy of DOGE — the House’s Defenders of Government Efficiency caucus. Two of its leading members, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX), are spearheading a push to cancel a $3 billion electric postal truck order that has produced more taxpayer burn than battery power.
Their bill, cheekily titled the “Return to Sender Act,” aims to claw back the entirety of the $3 billion contract that funded 55,000 electric delivery trucks for the U.S. Postal Service. That’s roughly one-fourth of the USPS fleet — at least on paper. In reality, only 93 vehicles have been delivered since the contract began in 2022. That’s less than 0.2% of the goal in two and a half years.
Ernst didn’t mince words. “Biden’s EV postal fleet is lost in the mail,” she said. “The order needs to be canceled with the unspent money returned to sender, the taxpayers. I am defunding this billion-dollar boondoggle to stamp out waste in Washington. Tax dollars should always be treated with first-class priority.”
Cloud followed up by pointing out that the cost per truck has ballooned from $55,000 to more than $70,000 — a nearly 30% increase, and one with little to show for it. And behind the scenes, the story gets worse. According to insider reports, contractor Oshkosh — the Wisconsin-based defense firm awarded the contract — is struggling to build the trucks at all. One anonymous source admitted flat-out: “We don’t know how to build a damn truck.”
The Biden administration funded the contract through the Inflation Reduction Act, the same 2022 law Vice President Kamala Harris championed during the campaign as a cornerstone of the Democrats’ green agenda. At the time, Harris called the EV transition “essential for equity and the environment.” Now, with deliveries at a crawl and production mired in confusion, Republicans are saying it’s essential to shut it down.
Newsom and other Democrats had long celebrated the USPS deal as a climate milestone — part of a broader effort to electrify federal fleets by 2030. But with delays, ballooning costs, and what critics call “comical incompetence,” it’s become another liability in a growing list of failed green government projects.
The USPS, for its part, claims the plan is still on track and defends the move as part of its “Delivering for America” modernization initiative. A spokesperson said the Postal Service is committed to emission reductions and stands by the operational value of the trucks.
But critics aren’t buying it. As DOGE digs in, the Return to Sender Act is poised to become a new battleground over Biden-era climate spending and fiscal waste. And with midterms looming in 2026, Republicans are betting this is the kind of waste voters will be ready to stamp out.
At this rate, they joked, the EV trucks might arrive in time to service the first post office on Mars.
