Trump&x27;s budget proposal has an answer to chaos at airports during shutdowns: Stop using the TSA Mike BebernesFri, April 3, 2026 at 8:43 PM UTC 0 Chaos at America's airports has mostly subsided now that workers with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) started getting paid again, but the underlying problem that caused historically long waits at security checkpoints hasn't been resolved. With the Department of Security still shut down, President Trump signed an executive order last week to reallocate funds from other parts of the budget for TSA payroll.
Trump's budget proposal has an answer to chaos at airports during shutdowns: Stop using the TSA
Mike BebernesFri, April 3, 2026 at 8:43 PM UTC
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Chaos at America's airports has mostly subsided now that workers with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) started getting paid again, but the underlying problem that caused historically long waits at security checkpoints hasn't been resolved.
With the Department of Security still shut down, President Trump signed an executive order last week to reallocate funds from other parts of the budget for TSA payroll. That has proved to be an effective band-aid for the immediate air travel crisis, but things won't fully return to normal until Congress passes a bill to reopen DHS. Even when that happens, air travel would still be at risk any time there's a prolonged government shutdown — something that has become more frequent over the past decade.
Trump's 2027 budget request, which he released on Friday, includes a proposal that would represent a major step toward what many conservatives believe would solve the problem permanently: Stop using the TSA for airport security altogether.
Trump's budget calls for cutting $52 million from the TSA's budget to begin "the privatization of TSA's airport screeners." Privatization is the name for a process through which the government transfers some of its duties to the private sector. In the case of the TSA, that would mean the people working at airport security would be employed by private companies, rather than being directly employed by the government as they are right now.
There are 20 airports in the U.S. that already use private security screeners. Most of them are small regional airports, but the list does include two major transit hubs — San Francisco International and Orlando International. Trump's budget calls for requiring all small airports to transition to private security, though it's not clear how many of the nation's 5,000 commercial airports would qualify as "small" under the policy.
Trump can't enact this plan on his own. His budget is merely a request. Only Congress has the power to decide how the government spends its money. But presidential budgets can often influence what lawmakers ultimately approve, particularly when the president's party has full control of Congress.
The argument for privatization
Privatizing the TSA isn't a new idea. In fact, airport security was handled by private companies throughout the U.S. for decades, until the 9/11 terror attacks inspired the government to create the TSA.
Republicans have favored privatizing a wide range of government services, under the belief that moving those programs to the private sector will make them more efficient. That same argument is being used today with the TSA.
Two GOP senators, Tommy Tubberville of Louisiana and Mike Lee of Utah, introduced a bill last year to fully privatize the TSA.
"The TSA is an inefficient, bureaucratic mess that infringes on Americans' freedoms," Tubberville wrote on social media at the time. "We need to focus on more efficient and effective methods to protect our country."
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There is some research to suggest that government workers are no more effective, and potentially less effective, at preventing security breaches than privately employed staff. There have also been reports that the TSA has failed undercover tests of its security capabilities.
Last year, the head of the TSA declined to rule out privatizing airport security, telling Congress that "nothing is off the table."
The widespread disruptions at airports that snarled air travel across the country last month have added more fuel to their argument.
"This could ALL be avoided if we passed my bill and privatized airport security," Tubberville wrote last week.
The 20 airports in the U.S. that use private security were largely spared from the extended wait times that plagued airports that rely on the TSA during the current shutdown.
"The money's already been allocated, the payments have already been made, and that continues without interruption," a spokesperson for San Fransico's airport told the . "That is a very nice place to be."
The argument against privatization
Critics of privatization have long held that shifting government functions to for-profit companies leads to waste, corruption and ultimately harms the public. Those same arguments have been raised to make the case against privatizing the TSA.
"Privatization does not remove politics from security. It inserts a profit-taking middleman and shifts incentives toward cutting labor costs and training time while the public bears the risk," Hydrick Thomas, president of a government employee union that represents TSA workers, wrote in a letter to the Washington Post in early March. "Stop using the traveling public and frontline security workers as leverage in funding fights. The problem is political dysfunction, not the existence of a federal workforce."
Some major travel industry groups are promoting a different solution to shutdown-related travel disruptions. They're calling on Congress to pass legislation to guarantee that TSA workers and air traffic controllers continue to get paid during shutdowns.
"Every time Washington fails to fund the government, these essential workers pay the price. So do travelers. So does the economy. That is why America's travel industry has come together, because this workforce is too important, and the stakes are too high, for this to keep happening," Geoff Freeman, president of the U.S. Travel Association, wrote in a joint statement with the heads of the Airlines for America and the American Association of Airport Executives.
Congress is in the early stages of discussing next year's federal budget, which will mostly be consumed by debates over big-ticket items like military spending and funding for Trump's immigration agenda. It's unclear whether lawmakers will follow through on Trump's request to partially privatize the TSA when their final budget is solidified.
Source: "AOL Breaking"
Source: Breaking
Published: April 3, 2026 at 04:54PM on Source: PRIME TIME
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