Late last week, an executive order was signed that commanded TSA agents to be paid. This should not be confused with Congress passing a funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security, far from it. Disfunction still remains within the halls of Capitol Hill and no bill to fund DHS has been passed by both chambers. However, airport wait times dropped on Monday to normal levels.
Where does that leave all of us?
What Was Going On?
The partial government shutdown that’s been going on for more than a month is over Department of Homeland Security funding. DHS includes the Coast Guard, TSA, and Customs and Border Protection, which houses ICE. That last agency is what the impasse revolves around, with Democrats refusing to fund ICE further and Republicans wanting to continue funding ICE as normal.
As the shutdown has dragged on, the funding to pay employees in DHS evaporated. ICE, however, was given a massive funding increase in the reconciliation process last year in Congress and they continue to be paid out of those funds. The relevant impacts for travelers is that ICE has now been deployed to airports and the TSA was working without pay.
I covered this previously and it remains true that it is unclear what ICE agents are doing or can do to support TSA operations. The lack of pay was driving callouts and resignations by TSA agents, leading to huge wait time increases at security screening checkpoints around the nation. Many commented, around the internet, that TSA agents working without pay while watching ICE agents get paid, further embittering them to the entire situation. I cannot say how true that is, but the sentiment is understandable.
TSA Gets Paid
Over the weekend, an executive order was issued that charged DHS to pay TSA employees. Monday, payments hit employee bank accounts and wait times at major airports seem to be down. How is that possible without funding from Congress?
Typically, the answer is, it’s not. However, the reconciliation bill passed last year, which contained the large funding increase for ICE, and is apparently being used to pay TSA agents. It remains unclear whether the move is legal or not. The impacts of the move are clear, though, as callouts at major airports have dropped so have the wait times at security checkpoints.
In the meantime, Congress failed to agree on a measure to restore DHS funding. The Senate passed a resolution to fund DHS, except for ICE, but the House rejected that and responded with their own measure that funded ICE and the rest of the DHS. In turn, the Senate rejected the House measure.
What Does This Mean For Travel?
While TSA agents have been paid, the measure is a temporary one at best. Congress holds the power of the purse and has been unable to agree on how to fund DHS. That means that no more funding is flowing to the agency, which is to say zero, than it was before the executive order to pay TSA agents.
Without an agreement from Congress, the root of the problem remains, and funding for the TSA will hang over every traveler’s head like the Sword of Damocles. It’s possible that someone challenges the legality of the payments, which could put us back at square one. It’s possible that this won’t last for long and we may find ourselves back here within a few weeks. The only remedy is passage of a funding bill, which the two chambers seem to be unable to agree on and the White House has indicated they may not sign even if they do pass legislation.
This funding failure by the U.S. elected representatives has put us all in a quagmire of uncertainty. In February, TSA PreCheck and Global Entrty were shut down. Then PreCheck was almost immediately reinstated following intense backlash from the public. Some days later, Global Entry resumed, although that bit of news was under reported by comparison because we were then dealing with the effects of war with Iran.
It’s good news that TSA agents are getting paid. When people do work, they must be paid for it. It would be better if they were paid in a way that didn’t raise questions of legality. For now, though, the crisis of wait times and paying TSA agents has been mitigated and the wait times at airports have gone back to normal.
