Elon Musk Offers To Pay TSA Salaries As Security Lines Spiral Out Of Control — Can He Even Do That?

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, is offering to pay the salaries of TSA agents during the partial government shutdown that is snarling airport security lines nationwide.

I would like to offer to pay the salaries of TSA personnel during this funding impasse that is negatively affecting the lives of so many Americans at airports throughout the country

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 21, 2026

As TSA screeners go without paychecks, required to work with pay deferred until the agency is funded, many are calling out sick. Nationwide this has hovered at around 10% of staff, or about 5 times normal levels. At some airports it’s exceeded 50%.

The result of this is closed checkpoints, longer waits at security, and passengers missing flights – after spending hours in queues in places like Houston, Atlanta, New York and New Orleans.

🚨HOLY CRAP!!!

The Houston TSA line has now stretched to a mind-blowing 150 minute-wait-time and has snaked around the airport, down an escalator and into BAGGAGE CLAIM!!!

THIS IS INSANE!!!! pic.twitter.com/MhPTc9qttS

— Matt Van Swol (@mattvanswol) March 20, 2026

BREAKING: Massive TSA LINES at LGA LaGuardia Airport in Queens Stretch to Parking Lot – NYC

Video by Dakota Santiago | Licensing @FreedomNTV Desk@freedomnews.tv pic.twitter.com/nDUnE0grg3

— Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 (@ScooterCasterNY) March 20, 2026

The TSA personnel budget is about $8.6 billion for 59,000 employees, for an average cost of $145,000 per employee and a daily staff cost of $23.6 million per day. That’s not all screeners, of course, but the cost of the whole bureaucracy. Everyone is expected to receive back pay once the shutdown ends. Covering their pay directly now would mean double dipping, which in some sense is fair enough. More likely there could be a donation to DHS to cover their pay so there’s simply no gap.

But could Musk actually do this?

• It’s clearly illegal to pay the TSA screeners directly under 18 U.S.C. § 209 which bars executive branch employees from receiving salary or salary supplements from any source other than the United States (there are limited exceptions that do not apply here) and 31 U.S.C. § 3302 which requires money received for the government to be deposited in the Treasury.

• But could he give the money to the federal government for the restricted purpose of paying TSA screeners? First, the agency has to have the statutory authority to accept the gift. TSA says that it does. The money would be available but not appropriated, except…

• The 2004 Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act section 507 made the DHS Gifts and Donations account available for the DHS Secretary to “accept, hold, administer and utilize” gifts and bequests, and it says gifts are to be used according to donor terms to the greatest extent practicable.

  6 U.S.C. § 453(b), generally says DHS gifts cannot be accepted or used unless specifically permitted in advance in an appropriations act but section 507 is arguably appropriations act permission.

• That may be a stretch, but it’s the kind of stretch we’ve seen before that’s not likely to get challenge. Who is going to sue to stop TSA screeners from getting paid?

• It’s actually a cleaner legal theory than the one under which Tim Mellon reportedly donated $130 million to the Pentagon to pay servicemembers in late October 2025, during the fall government shutdown. The Pentagon said it had accepted the gift “under its general gift acceptance authority” for the stated purpose of offsetting service members’ salaries and benefits.

  The legality there was far more of a stretch. 10 U.S.C. § 2601 lets the Department of Defense accept and spend gift fund funds without further specific authorization but only for specific activities like wounded servicemembers, dependents, and survivors, and 10 U.S.C. § 2608 created a donation receipt account but expressly said funds couldn’t be obligated or spent without an appropiration. This was probably illegal, but so much is nowadays that goes unchallenged.

It might be illegal for Musk to donate to pay TSA salaries, but there’s a stronger legal theory for it than the one under which Tim Mellon contributed to military salaries in the fall. No one challenged that one, and probably no one would challenge this one if Musk really did it versus musing on Twitter that he might. But would Prsident Trump even want him to?

TSA waits are also part of the strategy for forcing an end to the partial shutdown, making it politically untenable to hold out funding the agency, where there’s a fight over the limits of immigration enforcement (including raids and detention of citizens). Ultimately the side most likely to blink is the one that expects to be hurt most in the midterm elections this November.

Right now, probably Democrats are taking more immediate political damage from the TSA lines, because in this shutdown they are the side seen as withholding votes for broader Department of Homeland Security funding while pushing to fund TSA separately. That makes the airport pain easier for Republicans to pin on them in a simple “you won’t fund the agency, now travelers are stuck in line” way. I haven’t found clean polling on this, though, and broader poll questions do point fingers in both directions.

As this continues, though, the White House may see this rebound on them because they control the TSA. Voters stop caring about process and blame the party in charge that’s screwing things up.