I don't think so many would be out of work. First ones to be hired by the private companies would be the current TSA workforce because of the cost savings in training alone. Easier to hire someone who is already trained up to standard than to start all over with someone new who has to undergo the exact same TSA standards for training, OJT and certification.

Secondly, I seriously doubt there will be a mad rush towards privatization. Right now, the airport management staffs are in the driver's seat with zero cost. Everything falls on the federal government. Why ruin a good thing? By inheriting a private security company, even though TSA will still pay for a lot of the costs, the airlines will still inherit some of the headaches, complaints and administrivia that comes with playing middleman between the TSA management staff and the private contractor front office.

Thirdly, we really don't know what's attached to the Homeland Security spending bill. This is the nuts and bolts of DC politics. It's all about the rider provisions. The basic spending bill itself may be unacceptable, and if so, then everything attached to it would suffer the same fate. This proposal is only one of the many provisions added to the bill, and it's barely in the preliminary stages of the give-and-take compromises that occur behind closed doors in the life of a bill.

Fourthly, the airports cited liability as the number one reason for not going private. Where there's a number one reason, there's a number two reason, and where there's a number two, there's a number three. In other words, I don't think airports are going to jump on this incentive to go private. Some will, but many will not. The projection is 30 out of 450 airports would go private if this proposal passes. That's a whopping seven percent of all the airports currently staffed by TSA.

It truly does not matter to me what happens one way or the other. However, let's be realistic. A great majority of the airports prefer federal screening. Polls, statistics, interviews, etc have proven this point over and over. TSA isn't going away any time soon.