Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) have introduced the Abolish the TSA Act, which creates a three year period to separate out airport security regulation from the provision of actual screening.
- A new agency replaces TSA to oversee screening
- Screening would be carried out by private contractors
There are various issues to think about when considering whether or not TSA is the best possible way to manage airport security. For instance, two very separate questions are:
- Should the same agency regulate security and also carry out screening?
- If these functions are separated, should it be government employees or private employees performing the duties at the airport? (And how much of a difference will it make either way?)
Ben Schlappig of One Mile at a Time argues that private screening will be worse,
[W]e all know how capitalism works. It’s all about short term gains, so do you really think a private company will have the proper long term staffing levels, especially if it comes at the expense of margins? …Being short staffed is probably more “efficient” (for a company’s bottom line), but it’s not exactly helpful for the public, and I think we prefer a more “bloated” organization, in that sense.
He says “coming out of the pandemic, look at how well the TSA was staffed, compared to your local private business (whether it’s a hotel or restaurant)?” forgetting that TSA had massive staffing shortages. They gave up to 40% raises to attract more staff and retain existing ones, though.
To be clear, private staffed security isn’t ‘returning to pre-9/11’ it’s how things work at some major U.S. airports in the U.S. already. TSA sets screening standards, and employees of private companies carry out the screenings following those procedures. It’s also how things work in much of the world that’s considered safe today.
- San Francisco and Kansas City airports have had private screeners since the creation of TSA. Other airports have joined in the practice since then – though most that want to don’t run through the gauntlet of getting TSA approval, which is rarely forthcoming.
- Screening in Canada is done by government-certified screening companies. Most large airports in Europe have government-certified screening companies manning their checkpoints.
Ben says that private screeners would skimp on staffing, while government won’t. Yet a TSA-commissioned study found that private screening in US airports would be “as good as or better than” TSA screening.
While he acknowledges that San Francisco airport security is privately staffed under the Screening Partnership Program, Ben suggests that when screening is privately staffed “that the government wants companies to compete for these contracts.” One problem with the Screening Partnership Program is that the government hasn’t allowed airports to select the company that does the screening or run a competitive process. TSA has assigned the company.
But how does it work out in San Francisco? A Congressional study compared screeners at SFO (private) with those at LAX (TSA).
Comparing private screening at SFO with TSA screening at LAX, they found that because the private SFO screeners process 65% more passengers per screener than TSA screeners at LAX, switching to private screening at LAX would require 867 fewer screeners there, at annual savings of $33 million. This study also found the screener attrition rate to be 60% greater at LAX (13.8%) than at SFO (8.7%), which also drives up costs (and may slow down lanes as newbies learn the ropes after training).
In fact, private contractors are better at matching staffing to flight volumes. Screening companies have more staff flexibility – can staff up for peak periods “rather than having too many full-timers with nothing to do at non-peak times.” They can “match screener staffing levels to passenger traffic levels, both seasonally and during each day’s peaks and valleys.”
And you can hold private firms accountable for their performance. The only way to hold TSA accountable is congressional hearings and calls to give them even more money the more they fail. That’s the most perverse incentive there is for good security or for reasonable efficiency. Tens of thousands of TSA screeners have been accused of misconduct, half multiple times and there’s rarely any consequence.
Of course, TSA doesn’t actually protect us from terrorism. At most it shifts risks. In fact, the only data that the government has released suggests TSA doesn’t do a very good job of this. When internal testing found 90% and 95% failure rates detecting threats at checkpoints, the government just stopped releasing the data. If they’d meaningfully improved, they’d be crowing about this.
What protects us against terrorism is that:
- there aren’t actually a lot of people who want to die for their cause, TSA itself has filed in court documents that they’ve been unaware of actual threats to aviation that they’re guarding against, and they haven’t stopped any actual terrorists.
- reinforced cockpit doors do a lot to prevent terrorist takeover of planes, and
- mindset shift since 9/11 means you don’t appease terrorists to get through the incident, you fight back.
Ultimately, what we have now is a worst practice for security. We have TSA as both regulator and service provider. In other words, they regulate themselves. At a minimum the two functions should be separate whether it’s government employees at the checkpoint (working for a different agency) or private contractors.
Really, Gary? Abolish, privatize, etc. No ‘incremental’ change or actual improvements? Just ‘end it,’ regardless of the consequences. Yikes–That’s not a great plan. I see you’ve joined the ranks of @Andy S @Mike P @Mantis @Michael Mainello, and whoever else is cosplaying as a right-wing extremist these days. Not my ‘cup of tea,’ sir. There’s a better way, and it isn’t this.
Screening was better before 9/11. It was the airlines that allowed box cutters because having forbid they tell their frequent flyers and their customers that they couldn’t bring these articles that’s why those articles were allowed through screening areas. Now we have a bunch of people that don’t do anything and stand around lines get crazy ridiculous it’s a mess. I’m all for privatizing it as long as we have some sort of idea on what companies running it and how they’re running it we can’t just throw them in there and expect miracles. If we don’t privatize it then we need to look at the TSA program as it is now and straighten the thing out because it’s absolutely asinine every airport you go to nothing is consistent. Everything is different at each and every airport.
Private screening means that the people screening your belongings would be related to the people cleaning the plane. Or picking up your garbage. Look what privatization has done to those work forces. The contract would go to the lowest bidder. Which means the employees would have no benefits or compensation that would attract the best of anything. Especially since the president is super pro business, and anti-union….it will be a mess
Again, the TSA only exists because the Bush Administration didn’t sue American and United out of existence and prosecute their executives for catastrophic security failures.
To paraphrase an old saying, the prospect of spending the rest of your life among the general inmate population for a security lapse has a way of focusing the mind.
I have never thought TSA was a good answer, but this great rush to destroy government infrastructure while allowing the same functions to be bought and privatized is pretty much mirroring Putin’s Russian transition to a few making money from liquidation of services.
Love or hate TSA, the current privatization process is just dangerous.
I dream of going back to the days where screening happened at the gate, although that’s never going to happen. I approve of getting rid of TSA, though. You can tell what I go through thanks to one photo in this piece. There’s a pic, the one with the 7A sign, of the TSA Pre-Check line in Terminal 3 of ORD, the one I use when flying AA. It’s an unmanaged zoo and horridly inefficient. Thanks to AA having no skin in the game, there are no CLEAR terminals that would help traffic flow. It can be a nightmare at times.
The message is fine. The messengers…well, I have an opinion regarding both Lee and especially Tuberville, but I can digest it if it helps get rid of the bane of every traveler.
TSA is perpetually (INTENTIONALLY) underfunded. Hence its not Failing, its not being equipped to accomplish the tasks its been assigned.
Gary gets it.
Many countries privatize all kinds of government functions. Government oversight of private contractors can work and be more efficient and more customer-friendly.
The government does have intelligence that private security needs to have access to in order to protect against valid threats while not force every person that passes through a security checkpoint to be subjected to the same screening just because something was ever considered a threat. Technology changes, threats change. The government needs to oversee security but not run it.
@1990 – abolish the same agency regulating security standards and carrying out the execution (i.e., regulating itself)? Absolutely.
Most of what TSA does can be accomplished through AI, which would be more efficient, faster and cheaper. This level of AI and even automated business flows did not exist in 2001. You couldn’t even check in for your flight online. Rejected bags could have human intervention.
The real threat to air safety today aren’t “terrorists.” It’s drugged and drunk out messes that are mentally insane, grossly immature and/or entitled and have no sense of civility or even proper public human behavior. Frontier and Spirit have done an excellent job of bringing said lowlifes to the skies. They are far more in numbers today in 2025 compared to 2001.
Start imprisoning these people for a couple of years and the behavior will just about cease.
Lee and Tuberville are both morons. As in seriously intellectually deficient. Anything that comes out of their mouths should be immediately ignored.
Lee and — even more so — Tuberville are about as stupid as stupid gets for a Senator, and I don’t agree with their motivations for the changes.
….. and yet I support the idea of eliminating the TSA at airports and downsizing the TSA to a regulatory/oversight unit stuffed back into the US DOT/FAA. I also hope we can get the government out of the mass spying on our domestic travels and get airport screeners out of demanding passenger identification for passengers to get airside as that enables the mass surveillance state.
I worked in the airline industry for thirty plus years and have intimate knowledge of airline security and the workings of a airport check point. My answer to abolishing the TSA is not just no but hell no. The security before the TSA was established was a joke. It was barely minimum wage with no benefits and a high turnover rate vs the knowledge and experience the workers in the TSA have now. The difference is night and day in my opinion.
Gary dropped the gauntlet, and 1990 closed the blinds and dove under her bed. Glorious.
The same AI that can’t even get the number of fingers right on a hand?
Really, this is all about ensuring “swarthy-looking, military-age males” don’t get within ten miles of an airport, preferably by throwing them out of the country to begin with.
As usual, the unhinged leftists are triggered by the thought of no inefficient, bloated, corrupt bureaucracy to do nothing except to make them “feel” safe. Your reflexive TDS has backed you into a corner where you now are advocating for more and more unpopular positions, like more government fraud waste and abuse, for violent criminal illegal aliens to freely remain in the US, and for men to compete against women and put little girls at risk. You can’t even articulate a cogent argument or a better alternative besides more of the same, it’s just the usual GOP/capitalism bad nonsense. You haven’t learned a thing.
Mike Lee and Tommy Tuberville are two of the stupidest Congress Critters. Although Ron Johnson could give them a run for their money.
It is really simple. Set staffing volume, ensure salaries are high enough , and security metrics they need to hit, then privatize. Put it on the contract if a weapon or bomb gets through and it was negligence, the leaders of the company go to jail. Give them enough money to innovate so they can speed up the process and make it safer.
And yes, the TSA on the best day of it’s life is not 10% capable of that.
@Gary — I think most of us want things to be done ‘better,’ not to ‘give up’ on yet another public service for the benefit of private greed. So, no, abolishing this agency or another is not the way to a better society. We’re not ‘getting our money back’ by firing these folks. No one is getting a tax rebate in the mail. Dream on.
It seems most of us have willfully forgotten our civics classes. Executive agencies, like the TSA, are indeed regulated, audited, and overseen by Congress and the courts. It’s not perfect, nothing ever is, but that is our system, and it’s proven to work and change with time. Now, that may not be fast enough for some—I get frustrated, too. But, by design, it’s somewhat purposely inefficient because these are services, not for-profit businesses. Often, it’s simply not worth it to hand over our safety to the lowest bidder, as others have said above. We don’t want another lapse in security that leads to the horrors that many of us still live with the aftermath in places like NYC.
@Miguel95 — What gauntlet? You remind me of Butterscotch Horseman, BoJack’s dad, who supposedly died in a duel. Have anything ‘on substance,’ or you just ‘piling-on’ with person insults? Señor, you should know by now, I feast on silly names, so, please, feed me.
@Mantis — Yes, we know, and you have ODS (#44), which sounds like ‘odious,’ just like your behavior. Next!
Honestly, just gut the program.
If someone with really bad intentions wants to do something, some rando TSA agent isn’t stopping them, because I’ll go out on a limb and say they’re not paid enough to take bullets.
It’s a joke, it’s security theater. Everyone knows it.
@Mantis
You’re a clown. I’m not even sure why I waste my time on children, but the BUSH AKA REPUBLICAN allowed 9/11 to happen and poof, we get the PATRIOT Act and TSA.
Congratulations again.
Tuberville wants to make racist profiling the order of the day at US airports. He also wants to see visible ethnic minorities disappeared from being in positions of authority. That’s why he was expected to be full throttle on this mission to eliminate the TSA as we know it. It grinds on him that “black” and “brown” people at airport screening checkpoints can exercise authority over him whenever he sets off the metal detectors or can’t’ follow the rules for cabin baggage items.
Typical with these whining white supremacists, seeing competent visible minorities in a position of authority rubs them the wrong way even when they aren’t being groped. And then their hypocrisy goes into overdrive and they want to see the worst screening treatment hit visible ethnic minorities.
@Mantis you are 100% spot on. Well said.
Yes, I believe in the mission of the TSA.
I also believe a private company can do the job much better due to ACCOUNTABILITY.
For years, the failure rate of the TSA has been a constant embarrassment.
While some weapons are intercepted in the passenger screening process, far too many get through.
The last stat I read was over a 90% FAILURE rate!
There are all these obstacles to discipline/fire poorly performing government employees.
Not so, with private companies.
I anticipate travelers will experience better service, better efficiency, better performance, and it may even cost less.
As a security professional, and former owner of several security companies, i can tell you pre 911 I was approached by an airport in CA to provide a bid for airport security screening. When they provided their budget, I said in no way could I provide the quality individuals necessary for such an important component to airline safety. The told me several other companies had submitted bids within their budget. I said that scares the hell out of me! Privatizing is NOT a good idea.
Clearly the author didn’t travel much before September 2001.
Of course for-profit screening on a national level would be a catastrophe. Just look at privately run prisons. Then there’s the fact that the stunningly stupid Tuberville who literally couldn’t name the three branches of government while running for the U.S. Senate is a sponsor. Even a chimpanzee can hit yes or no but someone this achingly inept sponsoring a bill is just terrifying. The TSA is flawed but functions. We have zero guarantees that destroying it then handing the reins to for-profit corporations – doubtless well connected ones – will not do worse.
So you want to turn TSA into a regulatory regime? Do you know what happens to those over time? It’s inevitable that it gets defunded and defanged. We don’t need to say who prefers to do that because we all know who is anti-regulation. We don’t need airport security to end up being self-regulated like Boeing. We’ve seen where that goes
From the get-go the TSA was an overloaded, overmanned and poorly controlled gaggle of sandbagging government employees. In the few cities where private contractors took over, their performance and results were superior. SFO was the classic example. That said, standardizing and monitoring hundreds of individual contractors far exceeds something the government has time, and time again displayed its total ineptitude. The only improvement would come from a top to bottom overhaul and watchdog group with the power to eliminate nonproductive and/or non-conforming operators whether governmental or private. Good luck with that one.
Gary hates the TSA more than arriving three hours early at the airport, checking a bag, and dealing with a herd of people with bare feet on the flight combined.
I’m totally torn on it…
On the one hand, private businesses are for profit. If (in theory) one was running a tight agency, outsourcing that functionality would NOT reduce costs. And there are probably those people who show respect to a TSA agent as a gov’t employee who would view someone doing the exact same thing for a private agency as a rent-a-cop. I.e. it could encourage those already-problematic/Karen’esque travellers to just behave even worse.
On the other hand.. TSA has been exempt from the employee benefits, pay raise schedules, etc. that gov’t employees generally get. So for employees, they wouldn’t lose benefits going from TSA employment to doing the same job for a private company, because they don’t have any benefits. And TSA is not exactly running a tight ship, so the argument that outsourcing would not reduce costs is a very weak argument at best in this case.
@Greg Kempson — Thank you for sharing your expertise and experience here. For those who actually know and care, it seems clear that abolishing or privatizing the TSA would be more harmful than helpful for the traveling public.
@GUWonder @Christian — You guys get it, as usual, so thank you, as well. If this actually happens (the administration effectively abolishing and/or privatizing the TSA), and it probably will, soon enough, it would be yet another knee-jerk, spite-filled, politicized decision, not designed to serve or benefit anyone, except cronies and those who simply ‘want to watch the world burn’. Preventable madness. We deserve better than this. My hope is that ‘the pendulum’ will soon swing back. Unfortunately, most people will have to feel consequences first-hand before they wake up.
@OnePatriot77 — What ‘accountability’? Like, to whom? Sir or madam, we all want ‘accountability’ and ‘efficiency’ but so far from these guys it’s ‘all hat, no cattle.’ I’ll believe it when I see it.
As a retired airline pilot who went through 911, I’m amazed at how shallow some of these comments are.
No terrorist threats anymore? Really! AI can do it? Prove it! UA and AMR had security failures at 911? LOL that’s total nonsense
Folks who say the choice is TSA or ‘pre-9/11 security’ are completely missing the point. Is it intentional strawmanning? Unclear. The issue here is that security oversight and standards setting shouldn’t be in the same agency that does the actual screening. That’s a conflict of interest, leads to no accountability, and inferior security.
And those of you casting aspersions about security screening done by private companies are completely ignoring how it works in San Francisco, Kansas City, across Canada and much of Europe. That’s ‘private companies doing screening’ but not ‘pre-9/11 security’.
@Gary — If you are honestly seeking additional, independent oversight of this or any agency, that’s perfectly fine and reasonable. Yet that already exists (there are qualified technical and financial watchdogs, auditors, etc.), and such accountability measures could absolutely be made even better (which would be the ‘incremental’ change approach)–but you’re not really saying, are you?
No, you and some others here are taking those valid concerns about ‘oversight’ then using it as the ‘pretext’ to then abolish and/or privatize the TSA (and other agencies, one can presume). Yet, that would be a ‘categorical’ change to the mission and processes of such government agencies.
I, and others, apparently, still think that these are still necessary services for the benefit of the public, and as such, should never be abolished or privatized. It’s not really a partisan issue (commercial aviation safety and security), but it clearly can be made into one as it already seems to be here. *sigh*
I’m going to stay out of the politics of this and look at the logic.
1. Since 9/11 we have not had another successful terrorist attack on a flight that originated from a US airport.
2. Last year the TSA confiscated a record number of loaded guns at security check points. They are already tracking to exceed that number in 2025.
3. The TSA routinely identifies items not permitted.
While the way the TSA does it might not be pretty and I might not agree with everything they do, it’s hard to claim they are a failure unless you do so from a political POV. I’d love to see any of you flawlessly run a that has become a political football where one mistake could kill thousands of people.
But, hey, let’s just make this another political argument instead of focusing on how to fix what needs to be fixed.
So the woman that just walked stark naked through DFW if she had gotten on a plane in the sky would not have been a threat? Somehow she seem to make it through TSA. Our threat today is very different than in the year 2000. Maybe there needs to be a comprehensive No Fly List (at all) for people that act out at airports and on planes. Because I will bet money that nutjob was let go on probation free to get on a plane and do who knows what.
The further we get from September 11th, the closer we get to September 10th. How soon we forget.
And I’m not sure if senators from terror-free airports in Utah and Alabama should be dictating how airport security should be run.
While I appreciate @Parker’s attempt to stick to facts, rather than address the underlying ‘politics,’ we cannot ignore that this has everything to do with politics–it is after all how we decide to manage power and money as a people, so inherently, this and everything is political.
For the progressives still out there–folks, unfortunately, the water is *not* warm, but it shouldn’t cause ‘hypothermia,’ if you understand my metaphor. So, please, don’t be shy. Push back, when and where appropriate, as here.
As it relates to this topic, I was listening to a recent interview with Derek Thompson, co-author of the new book ‘Abundance’ (with Ezra Klein of the NYTimes, Vox), wherein Thompson describes this push to abolish and/or privatize everything, not as a ‘creative-destruction,’ as-in leading to something better (such as, ‘good for entrepreneurship’, etc.), but rather, what the administration is doing is more ‘destruction for-the-sake-of destruction.’ Specifically, Thompson described the goal of DOGE, which has been leading such efforts to effectively abolish and privatize such agencies, is an ‘ideological purge of progressivism’ performing as ‘efficiency’ rather than actually achieving it. That sounds about right.
I happen to think the result of all this will be bad economics, bad outcomes–and it will cost them in future elections. Time will tell. If it causes more accidents or harm in aviation, that’s net bad for all of us, who apparently care about the industry enough to frequent this Gary’s blog.
@George N Romey — Nice distraction. I liked that post, too. Easy on the eyes at least, I think someone said. Bah!
What an idiotic post.
No thanks. It’s going to be staffed with rent-a-cops, as safe as Boeing and will fulfill its promise as much as Marriot does. And, for sure, tipping will be encouraged.
Republicans should be the first ones to know that National Security should never be outsourced to private, profit-maximizing, companies. That’s what a government is for.
Pre -TSA What a joke I still have to take off shoes,coat go through CT scanner and then I get a pat down
They have my fingerprints seriously?? They blame everything earings blah…..waste of money
TSA frequently fails security challenges in which a fake bomb or firearm is screened. In addition, the lack of professionalism is lacking in the behavior of my TSA screeners reflects very badly on this organization. Why are they always yelling at passengers? Do they think it gives the impression of authority and professionalism? I have traveled to 34 countries and found that the most unprofessional and rudest people at security checkpoints are in the United States. Thai is due to a
Lack of leadership and training. Occasionally I have an interaction with a kind and professional TSA employee; it must be difficult for him to work in this environment.
Can any of the critics **prove** their assertions? Whether you can or not, I do think it’s a good idea to challenge the conventional wisdom and preconceived notions at times. But IMHO, any action taken must be based on reality and facts, not on attachments to political ideologies or on hyper-partisan motivations. In any system run by human beings, there will almost certainly be human error. But that doesn’t mean that a system can’t be improved.
How does 637 employees=$33 million annually
If you wanna get something past TSA (not saying it’s a good idea but it’s one that’s proven to work pretty well…………so I’ve heard ) is to put whatever you want to get through at the bottom and put a water bottle on top.
The TSA stooges will lose their ever-lovin’ mind on the water bottle and stop there. If you could fit a bazooka in your bag, it would probably make it onto the plane.
They go overboard to move grandma out of her wheelchair and miss lots of other stuff. TSA = Taking Sense Away.
I find it baffling that there are so many pro-TSA apologists. Has no-one witnessed how much better security counterparts are overseas? TSA is a bloated, unwieldily mess that this country ought to be embarrassed of, but like most failures in the US…it has no shame. Oh, unless “the other guys” did it, then shame on them.
Lots of thoughts on this one. I guess we’ll be left with government for the oligarchs, by the oligarchs and with the oligarchs. How to destroy a country 101.
The TSA is a makework program for people who are completely unable to function at even a McDonalds-level job and would otherwise make the rolls of people receiving government benefits look too large. The idea that changing it could possibly attract a “worse caliber of employee” is nonsensical for anyone who has actually been in an airport in the last 20 years.
For my common carrier scheduled flights from European airports, most of the airport security screeners screening me at European airports are private company contracted screeners hired by the airports. I don’t see it as a problem.
(33,000,000/637 = approximately 51805.34) If this is the total yearly cost of an employee, it is pretty moderate.