U.S. Representative John Mica, who helped write the law creating the Transportation Security Administration, calls it “a bloated bureaucracy.” TSA deserves the nickname “Thousands Standing Around,” Representative Paul Broun says.

Those who say that we’re inefficient or bloated -- I’d be glad to sit down and go through the books and say, ’OK, how would you staff this differently?’” Pistole said in an interview yesterday at Bloomberg’s Washington bureau.Airports are “optimally staffed,” he said, while allowing that “there’s something to” the argument by Mica, a Florida Republican, and Broun, a Georgia Republican, that TSA’s administrative staff of 4,000 in the Washington area could be thinned.

Broun, in a letter today to Pistole, wrote that he would “gladly accept your offer to sit down and go through” the TSA’s records. The measures Pistole has taken to reduce administrative staff can’t compensate for the “massive growth” of the agency over 10 years, Broun wrote.