(AmericanProsperity.com) – The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is one of the big winners from last year’s omnibus spending bill. The agency is in line for hundreds of millions of dollars in extra funding –- but accountability watchdogs aren’t happy. They’re saying the TSA isn’t good value for what it already costs and isn’t likely to do any better with the new cash it’s being given.
TSA gets almost $500 million for pay raises, new hires, despite scathing watchdog review | Just The News https://t.co/klsAnmqwmz
— Just the News (@JustTheNews) February 5, 2023
In late 2022, 18 Republican senators joined Democrats to vote through the Biden administration’s latest massive spending bill. The president signed it into law on December 29. Buried in the bill’s 4,000 pages of detail was a $460 million boost for the TSA. The agency plans to spend most of that money on giving its staff raises and around $60 million on hiring new workers. The bill also gives TSA employees more collective bargaining rights, which could open the way to bigger raises in the future.
Is the increased funding for the TSA good value for money, though? The unpleasantness of going through security at US airports is legendary, but they’re still not very secure; passengers regularly carry guns and other banned items past TSA checkpoints –- undercover investigators managed to get weapons through airport security more than 70% of the time. The Government Accounting Office has also found that the TSA could be putting some categories of passengers, including the disabled, at risk of discrimination through increased searches. Unfortunately, it doesn’t collect data confirming or denying this assertion. It’s also rated poorly at letting passengers know how to complain about the service they received.
So security at our airports is the responsibility of people who aren’t very good at their job and don’t track how well they’re doing it –- and that security is regulated by the same federal agency that’s providing it. In effect, the TSA is allowed to grade its own homework. And now taxpayers are being forced to give it an extra $460 million, with no guarantee it will do a better job.
~Here’s to Your Prosperity!
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