Remembering how unprofessional previously airline security screening was prior to 9/11 this is concerning but totally depends upon how it is privatized. No more LaToya’s with the hair weaves and nails, Jeremiah’s helping get the contraband through for the local smuggler.
TSA screeners are probably not trusted with top secret information. If so, they would be no different from private security. Private security could probably hire cheaper labor for crowd control and gathering luggage bins.
The DoD has many security contracts that were put out for bid to companies , reviewed carefully and awarded appropriately. Do i believe DHS will follow any of the above? Not a chance.
Privatizing public services is almost always a bad idea. Worse service. More expensive. Less good jobs. More private data and Money going to the billionaire technocrats. I would oppose this no matter what party or administration proposed it.
lol it's the plot to rob america blind, over and over, everywhere - every day a new way to extract taxpayer dollars and shovel them into billionaire pockets
i like the french solution to this
It is genuinely adorable watching a comment section composed of frequent flyers pretend to understand federal procurement law. The sheer volume of hysteria regarding "kickbacks" and "billionaires" indicates that almost no one here has ever read a Federal Acquisition Regulation clause, but as usual everyone will accuse me of being Tim's AI assistant, and fall on deaf ears..
Let’s inject some actual operational reality into this emotional support group.
Expanding the Screening Partnership Program (SPP) does not mean "getting rid of the TSA." The TSA remains the sole regulatory body. They still write the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), they still procure the hardware (like the Analogic CT scanners and L3 body scanners), and they still conduct the security clearances for the staff. The only thing changing is the labor execution.
Many of you are clutching your pearls over the "lowest bidder" fallacy, completely ignoring that federal security contracts use "Best Value Tradeoff" source selection, not LPTA (Lowest Price Technically Acceptable). The private contractor is held to strict, quantifiable performance metrics regarding wait times and detection rates. If a contractor underperforms, they face financial penalties or lose the contract entirely. Conversely, when a federal AFGE union worker fails a Red Team audit, they are virtually unfireable, and the agency uses the failure to demand a larger budget from Congress to "fix" their own incompetence.
Furthermore, the fact that half of you regularly fly through Heathrow, Frankfurt, and Amsterdam airports entirely screened by private security contractors operating under strict government mandates and then log on here to scream that doing the exact same thing in the US is a "racket" is peak cognitive dissonance.
You are defending a bloated, un-fireable federal labor monopoly that routinely fails its own security audits simply because you do not like the politician proposing the change. Step out of the political echo chamber and look at the operational data.
Please, please I beg of you, logically disagree with me, and shill over the TSA?
What I fail to understand here is how this helps prevent "chaos" when budget stuff comes up. Let's pretend the current staffing of TSA agents is utterly fungible with private companies in a competitive bidding environment. Private companies, notably, will stop work if they don't get paid. Whether airport security is done through federal employees directly or through a private company, if you don't pay people they tend to not show up at work.
Airports used to operate using private security paid for by the airlines pre-9/11, and it took things like a hundred+ hijackings and other incidents to get them to install metal detectors in 1972. Presumably a lot of that is that we didn't have these things in train stations, and airports are just train stations for airplanes, so why wouldn't we copy train station modes of operation?
Fundamentally, this is a low-paying, high-turnover job which then requires specialized knowledge of how to do things like "read the outputs of a luggage scanner and identify a knife", which is not as easy as you might think, so it's always going to suck.
The concern with the public thing is "TSA agents are unfireable", which is not true you just can't fire them without cause, and the concern with the private thing is "if they're already low-paying jobs, where's the profit margin appearing for the companies bidding?", and I do not have an answer for that.
This is what I’m wondering as well. The private contractor would still have to get paid through a budget passed by Congress. How would this change the potential politicization of airport security?
Contracts are paid out in advance to companies. The money is already delegated and therefore not affected by shutdowns.
Your answer looks good on paper but we are faced with the reality that this is the most corrupt administration since Grant. They ignore Congressional oversight and most of their management & procurement decisions have ranged from incompetence to criminal.
As a retired federal law enforcement officer who investigated white collar crimes, no need for me to clutch pearls. I know exactly who these people are.
Yeah, I'm sure those drone contracts with Unusual Machines, Powerus, and Xtend are completely legitimate and have nothing to do with Trumps owning and/or being on their boards.
You've been played by this admin, brother.
I love the fact that our President is undoing all the damage done by Barack HUSSAIN Obama.
Actually the rapid and poorly thought out formation of TSA was W’s bumbling mess as was the search for Weapons of Mass Distraction aka the Iraq War.
The motivation to do this is pretty simple.
When TSA becomes a political football, the process of keeping it operating is deeply flawed.
No worker should be told to come to work but not get paid. We saw it with ATC and TSA. Those functions can be outsourced and are in many countries.
Coast Guard, immigration enforcement are purely government functions.
He could bang your "wife" in front of you and you'd support it.
He wouldn't even wear the Delta A350 costume.
you are incapable of understanding anything because of your TDS.
It is an embarassment to any administration to have such a high profile agency not funded.
The solution is to turn that agency private.
It has nothing to do with partisan politics and everything to do with understanding politics -which you are incapable of doing.
There are multiple "solutions" available to the problem of TSA/ATCs not getting paid... one simple idea would be for Congress to do their literal job, perhaps motivating them to do so by withholding THEIR pay during shutdowns, too.
Or, similarly simple, Congress could pass any of the introduced legislation (2019 and 2025) that would allow Controllers to be paid during shutdowns (and do the same for TSA).
Or a third option we didn't know existed until now is to have a President issue an illegal (but oddly enough, moral) E.O to pay them anyway.
Controllers/TSA not getting paid during shutdowns is a good *excuse* to privatize them, not a solid reason.
As to countries that do privitize them, maybe you just haven't noticed that America is uniquely situated as a "corporate profit > human lives" country. We've seen two accidents occur now *in part* because of poor staffing and working conditions... and that's with the government at the helm. Just wait until the private sector has controllers working 7 days a week instead of 6, and cuts their pay even further than stagnating wages already do. I mean in those other countries, they'd at least go on strike for that- but our country in its infinite wisdom has criminalized ATC strikes.
Last, I'd be remiss in all this not to mention Eskimo's pretend solution of replacing controllers with tech that doesn't yet exist.
So in other words we’d do what Canada does…
and so do a whole lot of countries.
Why some people lose their minds when the US shifts services to the private sector as other countries have long done is hard to understand.
same with ATC to a lesser extent
In Canada it goes to the lowest bidder always it seems GaudaWorld. Last 5 year contract was for 2.7 billion signed in 2023. The agents often threaten to or go on strike to protest the low pay and working conditions. Frontline agents are little more than glorified rent a cops. The contracts are confidential so nobody knows how fair they are or if the tax payer is actually saving money. In spite of privatization CATSA is its own bureaucracy $$$ on top of the Garda contract and that like all bureaucracy’s is only interested in its own self preservation. The Canadian system is nothing to be emulated.
Trump is not a President. Stop calling him that, esp in a headline.
He is an uneducated, know nothing slob...
Last I checked, Donald John Trump is President of the United States of America. And you can't change that fact.
I mean if MAGA can change facts about a riot at the Capitol, 34 felony convictions, Haitian's eating pets... I'm pretty confident saying "Mr. Trump" is fair game.
Where will it end with this fool , as soon as there’s a MAJOR mishap ( to say the least) no one will pay attention
Tim Dunn and Donald Trump walk up to a TSA checkpoint.
The TSA agent, who hasn't been paid in weeks, looks at them and says, "Sorry, the lines are four hours long because we're short-staffed."
Trump leans in and says, "Don’t worry about it. It’s a disgrace, a total disaster. But I just signed an Executive Order to pay you with a secret slush fund. It’s beautiful money. The best money. You’re going to love it."
Tim Dunn immediately pulls out a spreadsheet and says, "Actually, Donald, paying them with a slush fund is a sub-optimal allocation of capital. If the TSA were run like Delta’s Atlanta hub, they would have used 'non unions' to keep these agents working for free while maintaining a 99% operational reliability rating."
The TSA agent sighs, "Sir, I just want my paycheck."
Tim Dunn replies, "What you need is a Diamond Medallion tag for your uniform. I’ve already proven through trailing twelve-month data that Delta employees are 14% more loyal even when they aren't being paid. It’s a fact. Anything else is just a subjective lie.
This entire TSA privatization plan is detailed in Project 2025 playbook.There is nothing mysterious or "incompetent" going on. Repugs want to privatize all government services. Does anyone in America read anymore?
I've been advocating for this for over 20 years.
As President Ronald Reagan once said, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help'".
I fully support President Trump on this initiative.
This is nothing new or innovative.
The only new part is that it’s being done for another grift. Fleecing taxpayers is what this corrupt fat orange Nazi and his minions do.
This entire “administration” is a living breathing RICO enterprise.
Yay. Qusay and Uday Trump are creating a new airport security screening company this weekend.
Once can only wonder who will be awarded the new contracts. Any guesses?
I can't be the only person to remember why TSA was formed in the first place. Before 911, security was routinely handled by the lowest bidding contractors that hired people at minimum wage who often supplemented their pay with a sleight of hand in passenger carry ons. Bringing these
characters back is totally on brand for the current administration.
The government has been deeply entrenched in political partisanship since early 1990s. The Constitution opened the door to gridlock and politicians ran with it unstoppable. Voters wanted to change but they continue to bring in candidates who immerse in chaos and dysfunctionality. Voters fail to study politicians' background and past records by being only interested in " the power of persuasion and motivation". We cannot excuse ourself as " a pawn" when we voted in a convicted felon into the WH by overlooking his past criminal acts. Capitalism comes in different shades but we only have crony capitalism that empowers and enriches the plutocrats. Today's "nouveaux" plutocrats reach their pinnacle without government subsidies and contracts, especially in AI and defense weaponry. Decent Americans should never lecture the world and each other about lawfulness as our current government is the world's top lawless country, both at home and abroad. Those who condemn " government is a problem not a solution" are always the first to receive government handouts/ welfare. I remember Reagan for his involvement in Iran-Contra affairs (when Iran-Israel- US were still in three-some relationship) and the failure of Star Wars that added 30 billion dollars in deficit in mid-1980s to national coffer.
Yes, this will definitely turn out to be good for the American people. Worry not. Trump’s got your backs.
Question. Are the contracts between DHS and the contract security OR between the airport entity and contract security? MCI or SFO? I've originated at MCI many times and the contract security seems to do its job.
Privatizing would be bad. You dont need to overthink that.
Americans with a badge already often have a power complex, add in the private sector and you have a mess just waiting to happen.
What went so badly wrong that ppl actually voted for tangobaby?
private sector employees across the board understand that they can lose their job far more than government employees.
but, feel free to show us ACTUAL data on job performance - like maybe how effective security screeners are at MCI and SFO vs. other TSA operated locations. Got that for us?
Tim, how about showing ACTUAL data that private sector employees across the board understand that they can lose their job far more than government employees.
Got that for us?