TSA Worked Without Pay as Shutdown Fallout Returns to Capitol Hill

At a House committee hearing earlier today in Washington, D.C., members revisited the impacts of the record-long shutdown that left thousands of Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers without pay, evaluating how to prevent this from happening again.

The House Committee on Homeland Security hearing was meant to discuss how to modernize TSA and evaluate flying terrorism threats post-9/11, but quickly shifted to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown in February after members from both parties could not agree on a bipartisan funding bill.

Representative August Pfluger (R-TX) said these threats remain very real, and it is the TSA workers who do the “sacred work” of protecting Americans—even without pay.

“The TSA agents take an oath to defend the American public, and they do that with pride,” said Everett Kelley, the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees. “And they did that without a paycheck, but understanding that their mission is to protect the flying public.”

CEO of the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport Chris McLaughlin said he witnessed firsthand the sacrifices TSA workers in Texas made to keep this oath.

“They were showing up without fuel in their car, they were showing up, making choices between feeding their families and taking on a side job,” McLaughlin said.

Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL) agreed that TSA workers carry out one of the most visible homeland security missions by screening millions of passengers a day and monitoring for evolving threats. However, Rep. Ramirez also pointed out that President Donald Trump has proposed cutting $52 million from TSA funding, while demanding $72 billion for other DHS agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

“It's hard to discuss the modernization of TSA and its technologies, when those same technologies have been weaponized to surveil, to target and to persecute communities,” she said.

The end of the 76-day shutdown restored funding to certain DHS agencies like TSA, but excluded ICE and CBP.

“How many months can they go with a Congress telling them that they don't want them to exist?” Rep. Pfluger asked. “I don't think they should have to go one day.”

During the shutdown, Rep. Ramirez said many Republican members refused to negotiate with Democrats to fund and reopen TSA. Rep. Ramirez added that the deployment of paid ICE agents to airports during TSA’s paused paychecks was “disrespectful.”

“If we really care deeply about our federal workers, we don't take their collective bargaining away, we don't start playing this blame game when there was an opportunity over and over and over for them to be able to fund TSA,” Rep. Ramirez said.