Airports in Chaos as Congress Plays Games
Shutdown follies are not victimless.
NYT (“Security Lines Snake Out of More Terminals as T.S.A. Goes Unpaid“):
Travelers at a growing number of U.S. airports are encountering shuttered security checkpoints and waiting hours in lines that extend well outside the terminals as the partial government shutdown enters its fifth week.
About 50,000 Transportation Security Administration officers have been working without pay since Feb. 14 as Congress remains at an impasse over funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the T.S.A., because of a disagreement on immigration enforcement.
T.S.A. officers missed their first full paycheck on Friday after receiving only a partial paycheck at the end of February. As bills and rent come due, a growing number of T.S.A. employees have picked up second jobs, sometimes calling out sick to do so. More than 300 officers have quit since the shutdown started, according to the department, and more than 10 percent did not report to work on Sunday.
“Our officers are coming to work, but there’s going to be a breaking point sooner or later,” said Christine Vitel, a T.S.A. officer at Chicago O’Hare International Airport and the executive vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 777, a union representing T.S.A. officers in Illinois and Wisconsin.
Ms. Vitel said at least two members of her union had been evicted because they were unable to pay their rent. During the lengthy government shutdown last fall, she said, government employees received extensions or interest-free loans from landlords and financial institutions. This time, she said, much of the public isn’t even aware there’s a shutdown. Ms. Vitel has considered asking her father for a loan so she can pay her credit card bills.
[…]
T.S.A. officers, whose salaries average about $50,000, will receive back pay when the shutdown ends. But that’s little comfort when many of them are still recovering from the record 43-day shutdown last fall, said Angela Grana, a T.S.A. officer at Durango-La Plata County Airport in southwest Colorado and the regional vice president of A.F.G.E. Local 1127.
“We’re still trying to pay the late fees,” she said. “We’re still trying to ask our creditors to please give us a break.”
In the meantime, some aviation experts say the T.S.A. is being used as a pawn in a political standoff.
“T.S.A. is being held hostage,” said Sheldon H. Jacobson, an aviation security researcher and professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign whose work formed the basis for the creation of T.S.A. PreCheck. He said Homeland Security officials could choose to reallocate money to pay T.S.A. staff if they wanted to. “But nobody wants to take those steps, because you lose political chips when you compromise.”
Unlike the fall shutdown, air traffic controllers are being paid, as Congress has funded the Department of Transportation.
Regardless, it’s simply outrageous to force people to go to work not knowing when they will be paid. That some have been evicted from their homes, had their cars repossessed, and been forced to pay late fees only adds insult to injury.
I recognize that Democrats, who control neither the White House nor either House of Congress, have limited tools available to constrain the Trump administration. Further, they’re on the right side of the ICE overreach issue. But their quest for leverage should not be borne by poorly-paid civil servants.*
My longstanding view on this is that we should either return to the pre-Carter administration view of the Antideficiency Act, and simply continue to pay government workers during budget standoffs (the money is being borrowed, anyway, at this point), or have actual government shutdowns. Simply pretending to shut down all or parts of the government while those performing essential tasks are required to continue doing so has got to stop.
*TSA agents average $22-26 an hour, depending on location and seniority.
As someone who has worked in PR most of my adult life and in politics before that: this is NOT going to work. Republicans don’t care if this produces chaos, the general public’s attention is elsewhere, and TSA agents don’t deserve this.
I really, really wish Congressional Republicans had a conscience, but they don’t. ICE needs to be reined in. That is without question, but wreaking havoc in airports is too disconnected from the issue for the public.
In the meantime.
Democrats deliver latest DHS funding offer to White House
BTW. Congress is going to be asking for billions in defense supplements to pay for the Iran War. Maybe under reconciliation which I believe has to be funded by offsets. If I were a Democrat, I would source those offsets from the ICE budget.
Agreed.
Oh.
@Jen: Republicans in Congress will care when it starts affecting business travelers. Or if the Republicans in Congress aren’t whisked through security. (I wish Democrats had not agreed to fund air traffic controllers — that would have affected air freight and gotten businesses upset sooner, which would reduce the pain felt by these workers)
By the way, Democrats have offered to fund TSA separately, and the administration has redirected funding legally and illegally in the past, so this is just Republicans deliberately hurting TSA workers to try to force Democrats to sign onto the administrations gross abuses with ICE.
The Democrats are doing a piss poor job of letting people know that they have offered several times to fund the TSA. But that’s because Democrats have no ability to tell anyone what they are doing, due to some biological condition or vow of secrecy or something — it’s amazing how bad they are at this.
I know that you are instinctively and reflexively Republican, and have to fight against it with every fiber of your being, gnashing your teeth the entire time, and that it causes physical pain to ever side with the Democrats. And so, I suggest this free market solution that only needs entrepreneurs with capital to implement:
Shutdown Insurance. Government workers can pay a small percentage of their income to a private corporation (perhaps run by the Saudis?) that will then pay their paychecks on a regular basis, with no interruption. Perhaps the unions can get better rates by negotiating en masse.
It could even be a new service offered by the payroll processors.
This should be pretty safe for the insurance company, as we’ve never seen government employees not get paid at the end (have we?) and Republicans have never met a corporate bailout they didn’t like so the funds would definitely be delivered.
Business Innovation is the answer to all our problems.
(I’m only about 3/4ths joking — the risks of paycheck disruption is something that government workers should be concerned with, and which their unions should be taking into consideration when negotiating contracts — either by demanding higher pay to accept this risk, or creating programs to mitigate the risk. Ok, maybe only 1/4th joking)
@Gustopher:
I’ve seen this messaging in multiple locations over many days.
It doesn’t matter to anyone who is not currently traveling. It does not matter to anyone who doesn’t understand how government funding of departments works. And it won’t reach anyone who isn’t following those who are pushing this information on social media/not following the news.
Why would they care about that? Republicans in Congress are currently all-in on a war their leadership picked that will dramatically increase the cost of doing business by making everything more costly to transport (including passengers). Business travel typically slows around holidays when recreational travel increases, which is right about now, and business travel has been slowing over time.
I don’t see punishing TSA workers as a winning strategy. Most Americans are just too disconnected from the budget process to understand the link.
@Jen:
And here I thought The Democrats had access to some magic chip that can just pump information directly into Americans’ heads. It’s all just so simple and obvious, the only explanation must be a failure of skill, effort, and imagination on behalf of all 47 Democratic senators, 214 Democratic representatives, dozens of Democratic governors and state officials, and thousands of allied congressional staffers, political group leaders and staffers, paid strategists, and media personalities. Astonishing that with their manpower and resources, they can’t make happen what we untapped comments section geniuses (who, strange enough, can’t even convince their own friends and family) have figured out so easily so long ago. Why didn’t they think of that? They all just must be inept + not trying.
On a related note, I hear Trump — one of the world’s most powerful and listened to men, someone who’s every utterance is blasted out as far as words can possibly reach — is somehow failing to get most Americans to back him, his war, and his policies. Nobody knew politics could be so hard, as Donnieboy would say.