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TSA Getting Yelled At By Just About Everyone Now

We're almost beginning to feel sorry for the TSA officials. They spend much of their time dealing with what appear to be the world's dumbest passengers, and then at the end of it all they get yelled at by angry politicians. This week is proving to be particularly bad.

Top agency officials spent most of today facing withering criticism from Senators, up to and including the accusation that they show "arrogant disregard for real Americans who have to put up with this baloney." We're not really sure what that means, and we tend to cringe when politicians start posturing on behalf of "real Americans," but certainly TSA workers have been a little grabby lately with diabetics' insulin and cancer survivors' body parts and other people's stuff in general.

These Senate hearings are almost kind of Congress's way of piling on, given that House members were outright calling for investigations of TSA over the summer.

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Hey, Who's Up for a New TSA Security Fee So We Can Pay Down the National Debt?

You might remember last spring, when we threw something very close to a temper tantrum over TSA's request to increase the security fees that passengers pay with every ticket. We suggested that maybe the agency should stop wasting the money they already had—the hike was floated right after TSA started rolling out gingerbread man scanners as replacements for their predictably rejected billion-dollar full-body scanners—before they started coming after more of our money.

The idea that TSA is hopelessly wasteful was echoed this morning in a POLITICO story about the agency's budget, which included bits like "tendency to grab on to a new system before it's really validated" (no kidding) and "cycle of faulty equipment and failed programs" (everybody remember puffer machines?)

And yet that's not the most infuriating part of the story. It turns out that not only is an eventual $15 security fee increase back on the table, but—weirdly, unbelievably—it's not even all going to be spent on airport security. Which is kind of weird, because with "security" right there in the name, you'd kind of think that's what it would be for.

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Oh, Goody: Tarmac Delay Laws Expand to Include International Flights

We've explained at length—see here and here, and probably here, and definitely this one—how the Department of Transportation's tarmac regulations are a recipe for travel hell. The assumption behind imposing huge fines for delays is that the airline industry simply wasn't trying hard enough to get its planes off the ground, and that market-based incentives like money and public relations disasters weren't enough to make them want to fly people around.

Put that way—and at the risk of belaboring the obvious—that's a pretty stupid assumption.

But regulations were imposed anyway and, as was easily and explicitly predictable, we ended up with more delays and more flight cancellations. So naturally the government has now expanded tarmac delay laws to include international airlines.

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Spirit Airlines Celebrates FAA Shutdown, Wants Congress to Eliminate Taxes or Something

On Monday we flagged for you the unofficial airfare tax holiday that the United States is currently "enjoying," courtesy of Washington DC being the most insanely dysfunctional place on the planet.

Without getting into too many details: House Republicans told Senate Democrats that they would only fund the FAA if three powerful Senate Democrats gave up on something called the Essential Air Service, which is a program that sends a bunch of money to (ironically) totally inessential rural airports in those Senators' states. Everyone from liberal journalists to travel bloggers agree that the subsidies are totally unjustifiable, so this was partly an attempt to embarrass the Democrats. The Republicans basically said "there's no way you guys are shameless enough to hold up FAA funding just to keep sending obviously wasteful pork to tiny airports in your states," to which the Democrats responded "actually, we're exactly that shameless." And that's why there are no airfare taxes right now, because FAA doesn't have enough money to collect money.

The sad thing is that we don't have the space to dwell on that insanity, because of course Spirit Airlines looked at both sides of the political aisle and said "you want to see shameless... we'll show you shameless."

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Save Some Money on Airfares Since Congress Can't Get Its Act Together

The government’s general ineptitude might just be your ticket to cheaper airfare, but you’ve got to act quickly. Due to the budget battle over the FAA in Washington, DC it seems that certain airfare and travel taxes are now optional—and that means that you might be able to save a few bucks on your next airfare purchase.

The unofficial “sale” started over the weekend, but it seems a few airlines still might be passing along the savings. Initially there were several airlines where you could save a few bucks—including United and Delta—but at this point it looks like Alaska Airlines, Virgin America, and Frontier might be the only ones left. Other carriers—we’re looking at you American and US Airways—bumped their fares to make up the difference right from the beginning, so in reality they’re just charging for the tax as part of their fare and pocketing it.

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Showdown Today on Texas Law to Throw TSA Employees in Jail

Today is the last day of the Texas House's special session, which means it's the last chance for Texas lawmakers to pass their TSA anti-groping bill. The bill, which would make conducting enhanced pat-downs a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail and a $4,000 fine, was first passed by the House, then modified and passed by the Senate, and is now back in the House for a final vote. As of publication time there's still no news on whether the vote is yay, nay, or nothing.

Will Texas lawmakers hold a vote in time? Which version of the bill will pass? What will the Texas public think? Who cares. This law is moronic. It won't pass in any recognizable form. If it passes in any form at all it will be struck down by the courts. If it isn't struck down by the courts TSA will pressure Texas until the law is repealed. This is our third post on the topic, and frankly we're starting to resent Texas just a little bit for continuing with this charade.

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Predictably, Texas Drops Law Threatening To Throw TSA Employees In Jail

Given our level of respect for the average politician getting involved in the average travel-related controversy, very rarely will we tell you that an idea is so stupid that it absolutely won't happen. We've spent years covering federal lawmakers who, at the behest of Hotel and Restaurant lobbies, impose fines on foreign tourists in order to promote foreign tourism. After a spike in populist pressure from "passenger rights" lobbies, we saw Congress pass a predictably and obviously counterproductive tarmac law that increased cancellations without doing much about delays. That's the level of sophistication we've come to expect from state and federal officials.

But when the Texas House passed a law threatening to arrest TSA agents for giving passengers enhanced pat-downs, we told you that it was a publicity stunt with flat out zero chance of holding up.

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Will Congress Say Sayonara to Funding for TSA Full-Body Scanners?

If the TSA is one of the least popular agencies in the federal government - and it is - then the agency's full-body scanners are one of the least popular techniques of one of the federal government's least popular agencies. TSA is trying to reduce public antipathy by introducing less invasive gingerbread man scans, but that technology isn't ready yet. Once it is, it will still take forever for people to notice the change, then to decide that they approve of the change, then to decide that they don't hate TSA any more because of the change.

Of course public disapproval equals political opportunity, so we periodically get the spectacle of public officials trying to make themselves look good by bashing TSA and its invasive techniques. A few months ago Texas lawmakers threatened to throw TSA employees in jail for conducting enhanced patdowns, which is moronic almost beyond words.

Now Congressional Republicans are taking aim at full-body scanners, with House GOP members threatening to zero out TSA's funding for new devices. Draft legislation doing exactly that was presented last week and, while it wouldn't do anything to remove existing machines, it would deny Homeland Security a requested $76 million for 275 new scanners.

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TSA Orders Re-Tests of Full-Body Scanners After Admitting 'Gross Errors' on Radiation Levels

Not to get too theoretical on a Monday, but in general agencies and companies go out of their way to solicit internal criticism. Literally billions of dollars are spent annually by Fortune 500 companies pulling all kinds of stunts—generating feedback, hiring outside consultants, even randomly shuffling workers around—just to make sure that criticism is flowing and adjustments are being made.

For some reason TSA does the exact opposite, with TSA officials going out of their way to prevent objections from ever really gaining traction. Just last month the agency was accused of holding back a report about radiation levels on their full-body scanners, for instance.

The results are as predictable as they are obnoxious: things are constantly going wrong, and TSA is constantly scrambling with half-formed excuses to assure us that actually everything is OK. Now the agency has been forced to commit to a total top-down reevaluation of every single full-body scanner used in every single American airport because—it turns out—there have been "gross errors about radiation emissions," among other "calculation errors, missing data and... discrepancies on paperwork by contractors."

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TSA 'Cooked the Books' in Report About Replacement Private Screeners

We've now written a couple of times about the debate over private airport security screeners replacing TSA workers. To catch you up: when Congress originally created the TSA they specifically wrote in the option for private companies who would live up to TSA regulations, but who would also be subject to the complaints and constraints of the marketplace.

The idea was that you don't want a government bureaucracy - especially one that might end up unionized - having absolute power over the American flying public. They might do things like grope women and laugh about it, for instance.

Since then TSA has been trying to do an end-run around Congress's original legislation, effectively trying to prevent TSA stations from getting replaced. First the agency dragged its feet on approving private bids, and most recently the TSA director declared that he was just flat refusing to accept any new applications. Congress responded by reminding the agency who gets to make laws and by demanding answers, asking among other things the equivalent of "why shouldn't you be replaced by private screeners?"

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Airline Security / Political Travel / Congress / TSA / Airport Security / Texas / Texas Travel / Full-Body Scanners / → All Tags

Texas Wants to Throw TSA Employees in Jail or Something

Our credibility on demanding TSA reform is pretty good - see here and here and here and probably here and here and maybe also here, and that's just the last month and a half. But what's going on in Texas seems like a silly distraction.

About 20 legislators have teamed up to author a series of bills criminalizing the use of TSA's full-body scanners and enhanced patdowns, and threatening to legally punish TSA workers who implement those policies. The immediate question that everyone asks when they hear about this: "wait, can they do that?"

Short answer: of course not. Longer answer: maybe, maybe, maybe legally, but definitely not after Congress gets involved.

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TSA Wants to Increase Security Fees Because You've Been Avoiding Checked Baggage Fees

It's time for our annual "TSA wants more of your money" post. Every once in a while TSA complains that Congress needs to increase the security fee that you pay as part of your ticket, and when that happens we do our part by reminding everyone what a wasteful, inefficient, careless, irresponsible, mindless, negligent, thoughtless, and other words that are synonyms for wasteful—and also obnoxious—agency they're running.

Last year the request came right after TSA instituted its kind of moronic post-Christmas terrorist attack rules, which meant increased security theater without increased security, which meant increased costs without increased security.

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