Airports to Congress: Give Ticket Fees to TSA
Ryan Boyd May 24, 2016
Lines of travelers snake past TSA agents at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport last fall.
The flight industry has encouraged Congress to provide the $1.25 billion yearly ticket fees to the Transportation Security Administration, which has been plagued by long lines at checkpoints due to a lack of resources, rather than allocating it to the federal deficit. In 2014, Congress voted to allocate 60 cents for deficit reduction from the $5.60 security fee for each flight, totaling $1.25 billion for 2016, and which comprises about 17 percent of the TSA’s annual budget. “We don’t think that’s fair, especially when there’s a crisis with TSA,” said Greg Cota, senior director of government affairs at Airports Council International-North America.
To read more on this story, go to USA Today.
[Photo: Elaine Thompson/AP]
Why would you give more money to a dysfunctional agency like the TSA? They have proven to be poor stewards of the funds they have. Just this week, the head of TSA security was fired for smurfing bonus payments totaling almost $100,000. (Why weren't more people fired over this?) If you gave them more money they would have paid him more money but service and results would not improve one bit. It's the nature of a government agency. TSA = Thousands Standing Around. Stop frisking my 87 year old grandma, stop standing around and stop paying bonuses to failed bureaucrats = problem solved