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July 30, 2005

The TSA, airport insecurity and corporate welfare... Typical GOP incompetence

This morning I watched Viewpoint, a political discussion and public affairs program, on our local NBC affiliate in Portland, KGW. One of the issues discussed was the pending reduction in Transportantion Security Administration staff at Portland International Airport (aka: PDX).

In 2002 PDX had 600 TSA staff members who processed passengers. Apparently the TSA reduced it's staffing level since then because the current number is reported to be 490.

The TSA is planning on reducing their staffing level at PDX to 341 any day now. It has faced heavy criticism at times for security lapses, employee incompetence and invasive search practices (more on that below). The Port of Portland, which runs PDX, describes this cut as "catastrophic."

Prior to 9/11 the various airlines using PDX had 375 screeners. And that was under a considerably more lax level of passenger scrutiny. This year PDX is on track to break all previous records for passengers departing at 7.75 million.

More passengers, vastly stricter security requirements, fewer people to perform the security checks. I thought these NeoCons were supposed to be business-friendly?

Congress capped the number of passenger screeners that the TSA can have at 45,000. Which is why the TSA is shuffling their staff. Now Congress is talking about reducing that number. The House has voted to cut 2,000 next year and the Senate has voted to cut 6,000 next year. Presumably they'll settle for a figure somewhere inbetween.

Why is the Republican-controlled Congress gung-ho about cutting TSA staffing levels? Perhaps the gigantic Bush deficit has something to do with it? If so then why in the hell did they all vote to pass the Energy Bill with Tom DeLay's $1.5 billion giveaway to Halliburton and other Mega Oil companies?

Let's say that with benefits and everything each TSA airport screener costs $50,000 to employ for one year. At that rate even the Senate's proposed 6,000 staff cut would only save $300 million. That would only take a small bite out of Tom DeLay's corporate welfare scheme.

Meanwhile the TSA has struggled:

So my question is this: How exactly is any of this crap from the Republican Congress and White House actually benefiting Americans? It seems to me that they are robbing us blind to enrich their corporate cronies while claiming that they're protecting us.

Posted by Kevin at July 30, 2005 11:30 AM