The White House is currently scrambling to find "creative" ways to fund the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) without begging Congress for a budget increase. They are looking at fee hikes and diverted taxes, trying to patch a leaking hull with expensive tape. This isn't a funding crisis. It is a fundamental refusal to acknowledge that the TSA is a bloated, vestigial organ of a pre-digital era.
We are watching a desperate attempt to keep a failed business model on life support. The prevailing consensus says that without more "discretionary spending" or "user fees," our airports will descend into chaos. That is a lie. The chaos is already there, baked into the very architecture of an agency that prioritizes optics over actual risk mitigation. Learn more on a related subject: this related article.
The Fee Hike Fallacy
The current proposal involves shifting "9/11 security fees"—those annoying line items on your ticket—directly into the TSA’s coffers rather than the general fund. On paper, it looks like a victimless accounting trick. In reality, it is a permanent tax on mobility that funds inefficiency.
If a private security firm failed 95% of its undercover stress tests, it wouldn't get a fee hike. It would get sued into non-existence. Yet, when the Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General repeatedly finds that TSA agents miss weapons, drugs, and explosives, the response is always: "We need more money for better scanners." Further reporting by Forbes explores similar views on the subject.
More tech won't fix a broken human incentive structure. I have consulted for logistics giants who move billions in high-value assets. If they managed risk the way the TSA does, they would be bankrupt within a quarter. They use actuarial risk assessment, not blanket theater.
TSA is a Jobs Program, Not a Security Layer
Let’s be brutally honest: the TSA is the largest federally funded jobs program for people who like to wear blue polyester.
The agency employs roughly 60,000 people. Most of them are tasked with the manual labor of barking at grandmothers to remove their shoes—a requirement based on a single, failed "shoe bomber" attempt from twenty years ago. We are defending against the ghosts of 2001 while ignoring the realities of 2026.
If the White House actually wanted to "pay for airport security" efficiently, they wouldn't be looking for new ways to tax passengers. They would be looking for ways to fire the TSA.
The Mathematics of Inefficiency
Consider the cost-per-passenger. When you factor in the TSA’s $10 billion-plus annual budget, the "fee" you see on your ticket is just the tip of the iceberg. The real cost includes:
- Opportunity Cost: Millions of man-hours lost in lines that serve no purpose other than to make people feel "processed."
- Infrastructure Deadweight: The massive physical footprint of checkpoints that could be used for revenue-generating retail or streamlined boarding.
- The "Hurry Up and Wait" Tax: Airlines have to pad schedules because security throughput is unpredictable.
In a scenario where we privatized security—real privatization, not the "Screening Partnership Program" where private firms just mimic TSA's bad habits—airports would compete on speed. If Airport A gets you through in five minutes and Airport B takes forty, Airport B loses terminal fees because travelers switch. Competition breeds efficiency; federal monopolies breed $15-an-hour power trips.
The Myth of "Congressional Approval"
The White House's attempt to bypass Congress is a tacit admission that the TSA is indefensible under actual scrutiny. If the value proposition were clear, the funding would be easy. By trying to "eye ways to pay" via executive reshuffling, the administration is admitting that airport security is a product nobody wants to buy at its current price point.
Congress is right to be stingy here. The TSA’s track record is a graveyard of "cutting-edge" technology that didn't work. Remember the "Puffers"? The explosive trace detection portals that cost $30 million and were scrapped because they couldn't handle dust? Or the $1 billion spent on "behavior detection" officers who couldn't catch a cold, let alone a terrorist?
Every time we "find a way to pay" for this agency, we are rewarding failure.
Risk-Based Security is the Only Logical Path
The "lazy consensus" suggests that everyone must be screened equally to ensure safety. This is statistically illiterate.
A "Clear" member who has been biometrically vetted, a Global Entry holder with a ten-year history of clean travel, and a first-time flyer from a high-risk region are not the same risk profile. Yet, the TSA treats them with roughly the same level of suspicion, barring the occasional "PreCheck" bone they throw us.
True security isn't a sieve; it's a funnel. We should be spending 90% of our resources on 1% of the population. Instead, we spend 100% of our resources on 100% of the population, ensuring that the actual threats have a higher chance of slipping through the noise.
What an Insider Knows That You Don't
I've sat in the rooms where these "funding solutions" are brainstormed. The goal is never "how do we make the passenger safer?" The goal is always "how do we maintain current staffing levels without a shutdown?"
It's a headcount game. The TSA has become "too big to fail" because no politician wants to be responsible for 60,000 pink slips. So, they look for "fee diversions" and "administrative adjustments." It’s cowardice masquerading as fiscal creativity.
The Uncomfortable Solution
If we want to fix airport security, we need to stop trying to fund it. We need to start starving it.
- Decentralize Responsibility: Give the $10 billion back to the airports. Let them hire their own security. Let them face the liability if they fail.
- Eliminate the Theater: Stop the liquid bans. Stop the shoe removal. These are "compliance rituals" that provide zero statistical safety.
- Automate the Routine: 90% of what a TSA agent does can be replaced by a machine that doesn't get tired, doesn't get grumpy, and doesn't steal iPads from luggage.
The White House shouldn't be looking for ways to pay for the TSA. They should be looking for its exit strategy. Anything else is just a more expensive way to wait in line.
The next time you see a headline about "funding gaps" in airport security, don't worry about the lines getting longer. Worry about the fact that you are being forced to pay for the privilege of being harassed by an agency that hasn't evolved in two decades.
Stop asking how to fund the status quo. Start asking why the status quo still exists.
Fire the TSA. Save the money. Move the planes.
