The Transportation Security Administration is facing an existential crisis.
In Houston, wait times at the screening area hit three hours this week. Atlanta and Philadelphia had to close entire checkpoints because they didn’t have enough staff. Now there’s talk of entire airports shutting down because of insufficient TSA screeners.
A looming government shutdown means the agency could lose its funding as early as this weekend, leaving 61,000 federal screeners to work without a paycheck.
It’s not hard to image how much louder the public outcry would have been during the pat-down controversy last year if the Transportation Security Administration had also shut down it Screening Partnership Program, which allowed airports to privatize their security.
