Here’s how to get airport screeners paid during government shutdowns: Privatize the TSA – Washington Examiner

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Conservatives complain about government constantly. But if there’s one agency hated by people across the political spectrum, it is the Transportation Security Administration.

This agency, created in late 2001, is known by alternative acronyms such as “Thousands Standing Around,” and anyone who has flown on a busy day understands why. On every trip, one inevitably gets the perception that innumerable TSA workers are lounging in the background.

This complaint should resonate now, at a time when a government shutdown subtly threatens everyone’s ability to travel. Although both TSA and air traffic control workers are being made to work without pay, some TSA workers have already been caught staging sickouts and many are just quitting.

One cannot blame them for insisting on jobs that actually pay. It’s fundamentally unjust that the nation’s transportation system should hinge for weeks or months on thousands of people working without a paycheck.

That’s just one more reason the TSA should be privatized.

The continued movement of passengers in the U.S. should not be left to something as fickle as the demands of politicians. Instead, let it depend upon the bottom lines of businesses that cannot afford a shutdown because they must turn a profit to survive.

Note that even now, amid this shutdown, security screeners are getting paid at the nearly two dozen airports that wisely privatized.

TSA is a total failure as an agency. Its workers have frequently been caught exceeding their authority: for example, stopping people carrying cash on domestic flights. They have opened people’s luggage to indulge their prurient curiosity. Several have even been caught stealing, either behind the scenes or flagrantly in the sight of passengers waiting in line.

The worst part of all is that the TSA fails to stop real and perceived threats. Some pundits tried to blame the government shutdown for the recent failure by TSA in Atlanta to detect a gun in an international passenger’s carry-on. But the agency’s track record is no better when the government is open.

In various tests, undercover inspectors have successfully smuggled mock explosives and banned weapons past security checkpoints as much as 70 percent or even 95 percent of the time. Think about that next time you’re forced into secondary screening because you accidentally left toothpaste or a shampoo bottle in your carry-on bag.

We propose privatization not because we know that a private security firm would do the job better (private sector workers can be incompetent, corrupt, and power-hungry, too) but because we are certain that a private screening company could not do any worse.

Airline security workers in the private sector would probably cost the taxpayers less, but that is beside the point. Even if an agreement were struck grandfathering in all current TSA workers at their current pay and benefits, they would have much greater incentive to show up for work, conduct themselves honorably, and be vigilant at their posts. The same aversion to getting fired that every private-sector worker in America feels at all times would be a great motivator for those who might otherwise sloppily overlook a gun or a bundle of dynamite in a carry-on bag.

Meanwhile, their airport employers would also have a natural incentive that the federal government lacks — the profit motive — to avoid shutting themselves down for large stretches over personal or political disagreements.

As many younger readers might have forgotten already, private airport security was the norm before 9/11. When debating the creation of TSA afterward, many members of Congress pointed out that although major reforms were needed in airport security protocols, there was no specific reason to think that government screeners would do a better job. They were right then, and they have been proven right in the intervening years.

Private airline security already exists at 22 airports today, as of August, including some large ones, such as San Francisco and Kansas City. It’s time to privatize the rest so that commercial aviation is no longer at the mercy of the brinkmanship of politicians.

Source Article from https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/heres-how-to-get-airport-screeners-paid-during-government-shutdowns-privatize-the-tsa

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