TSA airport crackdowns should be legal – because fliers already pay for security
For weeks, frustrated travelers trying to catch flights across the United States have been stuck in hours-long security screening lines as exhausted Transportation Security Administration agents are forced to work without pay.
It is not the first time that the government’s funding of the TSA – a highly visible service that affects millions of Americans every day – has been caught up in political disputes in Congress, this time because of immigration enforcement.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
In fact, it should never have happened, not even once.
That’s because they don’t pay taxes and travel already they paid for transportation security, not with their taxes but with their plane tickets.
The federally mandated Passenger Security Fee, which was first levied after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to help fund TSA screening operations, has doubled since its inception.
Today, it adds a fee of $11.20 to every round-trip ticket purchase – more than $4.5 billion by 2025 alone.
The fee is one of the government-mandated surcharges, including ticket handling tax, flight segment charges and passenger center charges, which add taxes of 15% to 30% to every airline ticket you purchase.
And while most of the Passenger Security Fee revenue should have stayed with the TSA, Congress chose to divert most of it to feed an already fattened wolf.
Bipartisan budget laws passed in 2013 and 2018 moved large chunks of Passenger Security Funds out of the TSA and into the Treasury’s general fund, where they can be used in any way government officials want.
Congress falsely presented that decision as a matter of “deficit reduction,” but we can see how well that worked.
If these resources had stayed with the TSA where they were, the agency could have created an emergency fund to help these critical workers during the government shutdown.
Or perhaps the money could have enabled investment in technology to speed passengers through checkpoints year-round.
Airlines would be in a strong position morally, if not legally, to get out of this practice and simply stop collecting Passenger Security Fees.
They are not to blame for this mess: The blame lies at the big, swollen feet of our federal government.
To do good to taxpayers, who now pay $11.20 each to wait in line, Congress and President Donald Trump have four options.
First, they can stop wasting Passenger Safety Fund revenue on unrelated federal programs.
This means repealing provisions from the 2013 and 2018 laws that allow these claims, which require that the funds be used directly for TSA operations and investments and the amount of money so that tax-paying travelers are not charged for government services.
The only valid way to change any collections should be a small assignment of the TSA Inspector General, who should oversee the collection of funds and ensure that the TSA is using the funding properly.
Another option is to turn passenger security into airports and other private organizations.
Private safety contracts, overseen by government regulators, are common in many countries – and are already being used in some US airlines.
The TSA routinely embarrasses itself with security inefficiencies, poor equipment choices and the often mixed staffing budgets that accompany the federal agency’s slapdash expansion.
Alternatively, Congress could eliminate the Passenger Security Fund entirely and fund the forward-looking portion of TSA’s obligations only with general revenue.
That would at least give tax-paying travelers a break on ticket prices.
One last option: Congress could fulfill its 2013 and 2018 claims.
Change the name to “Special Debt Reduction Fund” and demand that revenue go directly to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, to reduce the $39 trillion in debt our government has saddled future generations of taxpayers.
It’s hardly fair or reasonable for air travelers to help clean up Washington’s wasteful spending habits — but at least it would be more honest than picking their pockets for something that doesn’t shorten airport security lines.
In fact, both the president’s budget for Fiscal Year 2026 and bipartisan legislation in Congress called the SAFEGUARDS Act already propose ending the diversion of Passenger Safety Funds.
This is no longer about ICE enforcement, or immigration policy in general, or the separation of powers — it’s about our money.
Get a job, Washington.
Pete Sepp is the president of the National Taxpayers Union.
