The TSA Wastes $12 Billion and Still Fails 90% of the Time

0:00 Okay, ladies and gentlemen in arrivals area, please refrain from sitting on the carousels. Please refrain from sitting on the carousels. This should be surprising to no one. And what we have in the US when it comes to air travel in general is more communistic than most of Western Europe. Competition forces you to economize, to try to do more with less, and to try to do it better. This is the basic reason why free enterprise delivers the goods that communism never could even in theory. Hey there friends, fans and foes of Dad Saves America. John Pole here and I thought I would take this Friday well to talk about chaos.

0:40 The chaos at our airports. >> Several major airports have experienced scenes like this. >> It's insane. What was about a 4% callout rate for TSA employees skyrocketing following weeks of working without getting paid. Multiple major airports are experiencing days where 40 to 50% of their staff are calling out because they simply cannot afford to report to work. >> So, here we are, an entirely politically created crisis, the uh the periodic shutdown of airport security and the TSA. Over the past six months, TSA has gone without funding for 85 days and counting. That means TSA officers have gone without an ontime paycheck almost every other day. More than 480 officers have quit during the latest DHS shutdown. Yesterday, over 3,100 called out nationwide, pushing the call out rate above 11%. In Houston, the numbers were even higher. Nearly 40% calling out at George Bush Airport, where TSA is operating only about a third of its lanes leading to lines like this one.

1:52 >> Kind of ironic given that uh well, George W. Bush is the creator of the TSA in the aftermath of 9/11, but we're going to get to that. The lines are heinous. I've never experienced anything like this. It's uh it's crazy. It's it's insane. I mean, I've never seen an airport like this. >> Now, when we travel a lot for work, um this is probably the worst that we've ever experienced. >> I was to fly out of gate C, but we had to check bag at C, then walk all the way over to E to get in line for uh security on the ground level. It was an hour of serpentine lines there, and then you go up an escalator, and it's a whole another hour up there. It's like I got there at like what 2:00 2:15 and then you go to TSA and it's kind of like Disney World during school vacation week.

2:42 >> I haven't been to Disney World in forever, but you can buy some fast pass at Disney World. And you can also buy TSA Pre, which accelerates things for you quite a bit. And you can even layer on top another sort of scam to bring you back to something that feels a little more like traveling in the '9s called Clear. I do both. They're not crazy expensive and I travel probably at least once a month. So, uh this isn't hitting everyone, but it's hitting almost everybody. And uh that is why the Trump deranged Drudge Report is linking to claims that it's the longest wait times in history. And while the TSA lines are long, it is a short trip to that subscribe button so you won't miss our new videos as they come out every week.

3:27 But now, let's get right back to it. Hanuin McNeel warning smaller airports may soon have to close. The acting head of the TSA joined by the heads of three other agencies impacted by the shutdown. I just want to call out the cyber security and infrastructure security agency. They are an especially bad actor. They were one of the main players in the Biden era censorship industrial complex. Um, they say security in their name twice, but our civil liberties are not being secured by SISA, but I will come back to that in another video.

4:04 Anyway, I couldn't let that one slip. SISA sucks. They all aren't, but none of them are particularly good, but SISA is especially bad. At a time when our nation is facing heightened threats, Democrats have shut down the Department of Homeland Security. Republicans control every part of government and could have funded these agencies with Democratic support, but chose not to. >> The president also blaming Democrats for the airport's mess, also threatening to send in the National Guard and praising ICE. Federal immigration agents assisting TSA over the last few days as Democrats insist changes within ICE must be made to fully fund the agency. ICE needs to act like every other law enforcement agency with warrants, with badge numbers, with standards of conduct, and with accountability when those standards are broken.

4:57 >> Looking ahead, the acting TSA chief also warned of a potential perfect storm of severe staffing shortages just as an influx of millions of passengers will be arriving at our airports for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. So, uh, it is a political quagmire on both sides. Uh, it is true that the Republicans control everything, but they don't have the votes necessary to pass some of these kinds of spending bills without some Democrats and so we end up in the place we're in and the political mud keeps flying.

5:29 >> Senate Republicans sent Democrats a formal offer yesterday. Senate Majority Leader John Thoon says it would fund 94% of the DHS's budget, but not ISIS's deportation arm. Democrats threw cold water on the office, saying they need significant reforms to the immigration agency included in any deal. >> I I think any deal they make, I'm I'm pretty much not happy with it. >> So far, Democrats have refused to strike a deal without reforms to the AY's immigration enforcement operations. We need strong, strong reforms and we need to rain in ice.

6:07 >> And it turns out that overnight after filming this video, the Senate unanimously passed their DHS funding bill. And that bill actually excluded ICE's annual budget. But that doesn't really matter because ICE got 75 billion allocated as part of the one big beautiful bill. So, I guess the Democrats apparently caved on all of their ICE enforcement restrictions and now the bill heads to the House, which might be voting on it as you watch this video. And this is the thing about our politics. It's like every 10 minutes things are changing fast. They'll keep changing on this one, but >> our speaker is very unhappy. I'm not happy. Uh what the Senate did was uh frankly uh not right. We're going to put a clean, simple, continuing resolution.

6:55 We're going to send that over to the Senate and we hope that they'll accept that they can do it in record time just like that. The deeper problems remain. Of course, the Democrats in each of the past periods when they had total control of the government uh did nothing on immigration, didn't pass any kind of reform. uh and in the case of Joe Biden simply said, "I'm not going to enforce any laws and encourage the breaking of the laws." So, we have a real asymmetric hypocrisy to the max rhetoric going on when it comes to immigration and immigration enforcement. You know, this is of course the way Washington works.

7:35 It's the way politics works. There's log rolling. There's back scratching. These are actually technical terms. Um and there's leverage. And when you have leverage, how do you use it? President Trump is trying to use this moment to drive other legislation. Legislation that frankly is all pretty reasonable from my perspective. >> President Trump is maintaining that no deal should be cut in Congress until the so-called Save America Act and a number of his other policy priorities are passed.

8:05 >> The Save America Act, at its heart, a voter ID law, again, not really directly related to to travel. However, one of those agencies, SISA, claims that that election security is part of its mandate. And frankly, there's no more obvious first thing to do that most of the rest of the first world does, then require a ID to prove you are who you say you are. That that this is up for debate to me is frankly bizarre.

8:38 and um and it has 80% support from the public, but that hasn't stopped it from being difficult to pass. >> I'm suggesting strongly to the Republican party, don't make any deal on anything. The most important thing we can have is what's called the Save America Act. Don't make any deal on anything unless you include voter ID and you have to be a citizen to vote. You have to show citizenship to vote. Very easy to do. It's very insulting when they say people can't do it because they don't know how to do it. Anybody that can't do it, I think it's a very insulting thing to say. The Democrats are fully to blame with the struggle the great American public is going through at the airports. They're going through a big struggle right now. And we just put ICE in charge and they're helping TSA, the agents, and they're working together so far very well.

9:32 >> I don't know if they're working together very well. that B-roll look like they were more like walking around. But yeah, Save America Act, that's the leverage point right now. We'll see if that leverage pays off or not, but we're all feeling it if we're traveling right now. And the way it's being felt is leading to some interesting push back from the private sector. >> Delta Airlines just announced it's ending special treatment for members of Congress as long as the partial government shutdown continues. Delta says lawmakers will no longer receive preferential treatment. Up till now, they've enjoyed expedited TSA screening, access to airport lounges, and the ability to book fully refundable flights at lower rates. And now, from here on out, uh they will have to rely on their own frequent flyer status in Delta Sky Miles program. This is something that I hope stays in place because one of the reasons why travel regulation sucks is that none of these people in Washington confront what the rest of us confront.

10:30 They have their own super duper fast lane that we can't even buy into if we want, unless you want to get a private jet. So, like so many things, the Congress exempts itself from its own rules. It's the antithesis of the rule of law. So, good on Delta, who also, I think, happens to be the best airline in the country. I am not sponsored by Delta, but I fly enough to know they've got the newest fleet. Um, even though Atlanta is their hub and Atlanta is a disaster. But anyway, uh, the CEO of United piling on here, voicing his dissatisfaction.

11:07 >> How much longer can this go on? >> Well, hopefully it's going to be over soon. You're you're right. It gets worse every day as it goes by. Um, but the crazy thing about this is that, you know, that's what causes our politicians to get it done. Like I just it's ridiculous to me that it has to get bad before they can get a deal done. um but please get the deal done soon. >> Of course, it's in all of their interest to get it done soon and and the the political leverage that President Trump's trying to use is not really gerine to the airline business.

11:36 imperfect defender of free speech against the censorship industrial complex and uh richest man in the world/military contractor Elon Musk tweeted, "I would like to offer to pay the salaries of TSA personnel during this funding impass that is negatively affecting the lives of so many Americans at airports throughout the country." a tweet which this week has received 100 million views almost probably as of you watching this and uh President Trump was asked about this pitch.

12:09 >> Elon Musk has offered to pay TSA workers during this DHS shutdown. Is this something that you've been speaking to him about? >> Yeah, I'd love it. I think it's great. Let him do that. >> I think it's great. Let him do it. Let him do that. Uh, apparently this got far enough to be talked about and the White House has rejected an offer from billionaire Elon Musk to pay TSA workers. Apparently, it's a little more complicated. It would cost about $250 million. According to two sources, an outside individual is legally barred from paying government employees directly. According to the US Office of Government Ethics, however, citizens can make a donation through an account called gifts to the US government, an account which has never been used by anyone in history, I have to assume, except perhaps the mentally ill. So, of course, Republicans are pushing the White House to declare national emergency to pay TSA agents. This is what it has come to. You know, my more libertarian impulses never like this this use of declaring a national emergency to suspend the rules as complex and Byzantine and often stupid as they have become. But that's where we're at.

13:29 >> This is a Democrat problem. I think the polls are showing us a Democrat problem. Uh and they'll do anything actually to hurt our country so they can try and win the midterms. and and if we ever went back to our old policies, we wouldn't have a country left. >> President Trump never uh misses the opportunity to recount the litany of problems from his perspective. And so he is actually as of like 30 minutes ago posted this that the radical left Democrats and their leader Cryan Chuck Schumer are the worst and do open borders and let drug dealers in and are are horrible people and have horrible policies and therefore I'm going to declare a state of emergency and try to basically pay TSA even though the legislation technically isn't allowing me to do that. I'm summarizing.

14:24 If you could pause the video and read this if you'd like. Um I always love Thank you for your attention to this matter. Seems to be the default sign off for good old President Trump. This is not the only crisis that and it's actually uh not the only one that I think you could very much say is an emergency uh going on right now that impacts air travel. Of course, the Iran war is playing perhaps an even bigger role, at least on the cost of it.

14:54 >> Airlines are also dealing with the cost of jet fuel. It's jumping. In fact, it's doubled in the last month, and that's driven directly by the conflict in Iran. >> The question is, is it a war? President Trump uh isn't so sure. >> As you know, we are at, as they would say, a war. They call it a war. I call it a military operation. A very successful one. like successful like nobody's ever seen before. >> It's not a war. It's not a war, folks.

15:21 Um, we never have wars, actually. Welcome back to Is It War? World War I >> war. Correct. World War II war. >> Correct. The Vietnam War. Oh, I'm sorry, Carl. That was a congressionally authorized counteroffensive. Don't worry. We get right back on track with the Korean War. War. No, that was police action. >> No, they had tanks and stuff. Well, the police have tanks now, don't they, Carl? Okay. The first and second Iraq war. >> Uh, war.

15:49 >> They identify as military action. It's a bit like pronouns, except we kill people. All right. How about Libya? >> War. >> I'm sorry. That was kinetic action, not a war. Venezuela. >> Uh, well, it was a it was a an act of war, I think. >> No, I'm sorry. That was a law enforcement operation, not a war. Iran. >> It's a war. We're doing war things. >> No, not war things. Preemptive retaliatory deescalation action. No, that's that's that's not a thing.

16:15 >> All right, judges. Okay, >> good old Andrew Heaton. Uh the Bragg Brothers over at Reason making making good fun. Making good fun. Uh the fun making at DHS under the leadership of Christy Gnome who produced this I assume with Jerry Brookheimr uh ad last year. >> Why do I love these wide open spaces? They remind me of why our forefathers came here. Not just for its beauty, but for the freedom only America provides.

16:46 I'm Christine No. From the cowboys who tamed the West to the Titans who built our cities. To the dreamers who chase the impossible. Our greatness calls people to us. From President Trump and me, welcome home. So, I don't know if this ad really was the straw that broke the camel's back, but that's certainly how the news is playing it. >> Christy Gnome is out as Homeland Security Chief. >> Sources say the breaking point for President Trump when it came to Homeland Security Secretary Christy Gnome was this $220 million taxpayer funded ad campaign. So technically this ad campaign, it was almost as much as Elon Musk was going to donate to pay the TSA workers just to do an ad with super galloping shots like this.

17:31 >> Senator John Kennedy pressed Gnome about those ads during a hearing this week. >> The president approved ahead of time you spending $220 million running TV ads across the country in which you are featured prominently. >> Yes, sir. He went through the legal processes. Did it correct the president? OM Yes, >> he did. >> Mhm. Yes. >> Overnight, the president saying, quote, "I spent less money than that to become president. I didn't know about it." >> Burn Christy Gnome is out and former MMA fighter is in. I think the MMA ratio in the White House continues to rise.

18:09 >> Trump now nominating Oklahoma Senator Mark Wayne Mullen to take over for Gnome. He's a former mixed martial artist and business owner who's also a member of the Cherokee Nation. >> This, of course, is not even remotely new. DHS creating crazy bombastic propaganda is actually just part for the course. Here's here's a piece from uh late Trump 45 at the end of 2020. >> Get on. Oh, Dr. Marco.

18:44 I mean, it's kind of kind of awesome knocking on the door of a submarine. That's kind of crazy. >> I serve to promote homeland security and public safety. I serve to provide careerlong training to law enforcement professionals. >> Again, 2020 masks outside science-free. No fiscal responsibility, no science in the US federal government. I serve to defend against today's threats and build more secure and resilient infrastructure for the future. >> I serve to prevent an attack against the United States using a weapon of mass destruction through timely and responsive support to our operational components.

19:20 >> I serve to protect the nation's transportation systems to ensure freedom of movement for people and commerce. >> I stand ready to rise. >> I stand ready to rise. >> I stand ready to rise. >> I stand ready to rise. face the next challenge that threatens our homeland. >> I'm laughing. But of course, a lot of these are really important things that the federal government does. These are some of the things that it's actually if you're going to have a government, protecting the homeland, protecting the border, maintaining law and order. Those are kind of the table stakes for anything like a sovereign state. So, uh, I want them to be good at it. I'm not opposed to there being any advertising or recruitment tools, but quarter billion dollar propaganda campaigns really don't pass the sniff test. And again, the TSA in particular, again, this is in 2020, was pulling out all the stops to uh to promote themselves in 239 Cinemascope letter box.

20:29 Becoming a transportation security officer is a tremendous opportunity and responsibility. Your mission to protect the traveling public. At times the job can be challenging standing for long periods of time lifting luggage and conducting patowns. >> Yeah, the pat downs. I think we've all experienced if you've flown some dubious pat downs. >> You'll be doing whatever it takes to keep people safe.

21:00 You're looking for someone who has strong work ethic, who has a belief and a commitment to a vision and a mission. Looking for someone who is flexible with their work schedule and work hours. It's not necessarily just about what someone can do for TSA, but also what they can do for the entire federal government. >> Ask not what you can do for TSA, ask what you can do for the entire federal government. I think uh yeah, that's a reformulation of JFK if I've ever heard one.

21:30 >> You'll be a part of a team built on trust, respect, and integrity. A team that's alert and vigilant at all times. TSOs take the same oath as those who serve in the military because we're cut from the same cloth. And that's where I have to stop this one. Because we're cut from the same cloth as the military. I I'm not really sure that's reasonable. I'm pretty sure it's not. I'm pretty sure it's not even reasonable to say it's cut from the same cloth as anything that works. Because every attempt to measure the TSA and whether it works, and by works, I mean prevent heinous weapons of destruction and death from getting into airports and onto airplanes. Well, the TSA fails quite spectacularly every single time.

22:24 The undercover tests were conducted by Homeland Security audit teams charged with probing TSA checkpoints nationwide. Yet again, sources say TSA screening officers failed to detect test weapons at a disturbingly high rate. The audit teams usually try smuggling guns, knives, and mock explosives through TSA checkpoints, >> including rusted trident nunchucks. So, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles could make it through most TSA checkpoints.

22:55 >> In 2015, the TSA failed to detect 95% of the team's weapons. The latest failure rate set to still be unacceptably high. It's the best bet you can make that you'll get your trident through TSA. >> In a statement today, the TSA said, "We take the findings very seriously and are implementing measures that will improve screening effectiveness at checkpoints." The TSA wants the money to roll out new CAT scan type of 3D screeners that better check carry-on bags for signs of weapons.

23:25 >> Certainly, additional investment would make uh travelers, whether they're Americans or people visiting our country, safer. >> That was 2015. Here's a couple years later. How did they do? >> An alarming new report is raising questions about airport security. >> Yeah, it says that the TSA failed most of its tests. 7 Action News reporter Shelley Childers is live at Metro Airport this morning. And Shelly, what test are we talking about here? >> Well, it was the Department of Homeland Security. They conducted undercover testing at US airports across the country, specifically with their TSA screening checkpoints.

24:00 said TSA screeners, their equipment and procedures failed more than half the time. So when pressed to get the failure rate, ABC News was told by a source that 80% failure was in the ballpark. Members of Congress that were briefed on the report call the results disturbing. The Department of Homeland Security will not release any other details, but they did say they made eight recommendations for TSA for checkpoint security improvements. And the head of TSA says that he will be taking those eight recommendations very seriously.

24:31 >> Well, I guess they improved by 15%. So now only they're only at a negative B, I guess you'd say. You know what? What do you get when you only succeed 20% of the time? It's it's it's all an F, but you have to go into the negatives to achieve this level of failure. That was 2017. As of right now, it's not much better. This is from actually a buddy of mine, Gary Left. At 10 billion a year, the TSA still fails 90% of the time, and it covers it up. He says that because recent um horrible, unacceptable audits have basically said the same thing, but they haven't released any numbers. So, they simply decided we're no longer going to say what our failure rate is to the public. One other fundamental failure of the TSA is its failure to basically use logic. And by logic, I mean profiling because there is a profile of the people most likely to actually commit heinous crimes and they aren't old women with sippy cups. TSA officer hassles female passenger over sippy cup. This is back in 2007 when the war on terror fervor was a little more intense. Although maybe we'll be back there given what's been going on for the past month. But this is the thing. This is what separates TSA from say the Israeli security at their airports where they they know who they're looking for and they don't waste time shaking down old ladies. I mean this is just sort of this straight out of airplane or in this case airplane 2.

26:13 Not so fast, Frenchie. >> Well, these navigational charts seem okay. >> Let the Osama bin Laden look alike through, but shake down the old lady. That's that's the way to do it. And when you're not shaking down old ladies, and this is not a majority, this is a small minority of cases, uh, but there is a there is a non-trivial amount of disappearing technology going through the screening process. Tonight, TSA agents at Miami International Airport caught on camera allegedly stealing hundreds of dollars from passengers.

26:46 Video provided by the Miami Dade State Attorney's Office appears to reveal Jose Gonzalez and Labberius Williams going through a black bag at a security checkpoint. >> Did he say Jose? I think it's Jose, but okay. When Williams walks away, Gonzalez then appears to take something out of the bin and put it in his pocket. In another video, prosecutors say he's also seen removing something from a Louis Vuitton bag, setting it aside, and then grabbing it out of the bin before the luggage is screened. Not the highest IQ move considering that there's cameras everywhere, but what can we say? Among the things that TSA has spent their 11.8 billion a year budget on is content. Uh not just advertising propaganda, but uh new media, social media content.

27:39 >> Why do I have to show a photo ID? Identity matters. It's critical to make sure those boarding the plane with you are really who they say they are. Our officers are specially trained and equipped with black lights and magnifying loops to ensure your ID and boarding pass are valid. >> We're all used to seeing these these cheesy videos, these instructional videos at the airport, but they're also on YouTube and they get weirder and weirder the deeper you go.

28:06 >> We'd like to explain the very important reasons why we do what we do. Why? Why with an H? Why with an extra special H? >> We'd like to explain the very important reasons why we do what we do. >> You're saying it weird. >> Where do you get off? >> I just don't get why you're saying it that way. >> Why I'm saying what what way? >> Forget it. >> Yeah. Yeah. If you're spending that much money, maybe you could just re-record the voice over. early TSA social media was was on the sleepy side, on the why didn't you reshoot this side.

28:44 >> Many of the things that you can carry when they when you put them together in your uh your carry-ons or your bags, even though separately they are of no concern, when they put them together, they can look like something that we need to stop, step back, and look at with more detail. This feels like, "Hey, Bob, we got to shoot this video." And he's like, "Huh? What are you talking about?" "No, no, we're shooting. Go. We're shooting. Do it."

29:13 >> And many things that you carry in your bags can look like u an explosive to us when they're in combination with other items. >> This happened to my parents. They were actually at the Atlantic City airport, taken by TSA, taken off site, separated, and interrogated because my dad had several bars of soap and an umbrella in his bag. This is that, you know, again, shaking down old white people is the way they prove they're not racial profiling with gusto. On on social media front, of course, in the attempts to um spice things up and get more hip for the kids, it just keeps getting weirder at taxpayer expense.

30:13 Okay, these at first glance just look like some really cool high heels. >> Bullets like all around. It's crazy. Bullets. >> Crazy but fake, right? >> There is a weapon because it has a gun as a base of the heel. >> Mhm. This can be used as a weapon even though you know you can hit somebody head with that. >> I mean I hope that didn't cost anything.

30:44 It cost something though. There's motion graphics. Who is this for? Who is that for? Why did they do this? Those questions are doubly applicable to what comes next. Today we're going to be talking about the 10 most unusual items discovered at TSA checkpoints in 2016. 10. Trivia question. Can this trailer hitch go on the airplane? No. Nine. Hello, kitty.

31:16 Eight. So, what sport do you play with this bat? Seven. A golden hand grenade. Six. Let's see. I pack my toothpaste, my underwear, and my replica exploding vest. Five. Come on, officer. It's a ladder opener. Four. There's nothing funny about dead seahorses. Three. I just need these to open my bag of peanuts. Two. One. The strangest thing is this passenger. A movie problem. So, if you're wondering what you can and can't bring to the airport, contact us here.

31:55 Safe travels. >> That ending suggests that was for the public. It was posted on their YouTube channel. Yeah. How did we get here? H how did we get to a place where these are the people keeping us safe and and then not keeping us safe because they're enscconced in the politics of our fiscal catastrophes? Well, it starts further back than most people realize. In fact, the early stages of the Department of Homeland Security and the TSA were actually set by the Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVey, a domestic terrorist attack that, as I understand it, was at least partially motivated by the federal response to um Ruby Ridge. And we had some not great things happen in the '90s, even though I still think the '90s represent the peak of Western civilization in general, but more like the late '9s. What came next was the the the the architecture for the Patriot Act being laid down by President Clinton. We can intensify the fight against terrorists and organized criminals at home and abroad if Congress passes the anti-terrorism legislation I proposed after the Oklahoma City bombing. Now, >> of course, we also had the 1993 Islamic terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, the first attempt to blow that set of buildings up. There's more than just Timothy McVey at work. Um, one more tragedy in the '90s that led to another piece of the puzzle was the TWWA 800 crash. This was a large flight. It was unclear why it crashed and it gave birth to a commission led by Vice President Gore that was sort of euphemistically called the Gore Commission. And here you can find uh Vice President Gore again both the Clinton Gore is a snapshot of a reality that seems impossible today. a reality in which the Democratic Party was more or less over the target of the average American, which is to say they were a centerright party. Kind of crazy, but true relative to today, relative to most of the planet. We call for the modernization of the national airspace system to be accelerated and we call for nationwide implementation by the year 2005.

34:25 This would bring the safety and efficiency benefits of a modernized system a full decade sooner than current plans project. And what he's talking about there, and I've done an entire video on this, is the modernization of American air traffic control, which we still have not done, which has still not happened. But air traffic control in this country is in the stone age relative to everywhere else, including privatized Canada, which I will come back to. This will require new ways of doing things and innovative approaches to financing, but it must be done.

35:01 Third, we do have additional security recommendations. We see the threat to commercial aviation growing and evolving. We've tried to anticipate some future problems and we believe that attacks on US airlines are in fact an attack on America herself. And therefore, we call for a new federal commitment to lead the fight against terrorism and propose significant federal funding to get the job done. >> So, what was significant federal funding in the late '9s? Well, it it it is almost quaint by today's standards. The balance budget I submitted to Congress last week contains $100 million for future aviation security improvements as the commission recommends. I urge the Congress to provide this critical funding. This unprecedented federal commitment reflects our resolve to do everything we can to protect our people.

36:00 Did you get that? Balanced budget. $100 million with an M. Not a B or a T, but an M. 100 million. Uncle Sam literally loses a hund00 million in Minnesota a year. No, he he loses 10 times that. But regardless, this is how much better off we were in the late 90s in in terms of government sanity. And and government went pretty insane in the aftermath of 9/11, which took that foundation and exploded upon it in response to the terror attack. A terror attack that I was in New York City for and that um that that rocked all of our worlds. Congress passed the Aviation and Transportation Security Act. The act required that airport screening be conducted by federal officials and that 100% of check bags be screened.

36:56 >> So, one thing to just note is that aviation act was passed just two months after 9/11. Two months. It does beg the question of was it just on the shelf ready to go and I think the answer mostly was yes that there were security hawks who were ready for a crisis. I'm not saying they caused it. I'm just saying that they were ready for it with legislation.

37:27 You don't draft modern thousandpage legislation in two months in Washington DC. So this this all took shape very very quickly in the aftermath of 9/11. Later in 2003, GSA moved from the Department of Transportation to become part of the newly established Department of Homeland Security. GSA was tasked with the mission of protecting the nation's transportation systems. But as challenges grew complex and the transportation security threats evolved, so would TSA.

38:01 >> Evolve is one way to put it. um one of the slogans at the time for selling the Department of Homeland Security and the federalization of the entire airline industry security apparatus which up to that point was handled mostly privately and mostly effectively privately actually was this statement by then uh Senate Majority Leader Tom Dashel. You can't professionalize unless you federalize because we all know that there's nothing more professional than the federal government. Well, there's also nothing quite as professional as Tom Dashel's accumulation of money, leveraging his political clout. Another of President Obama's cabinet nominees in hot water over taxes, as Harry pointed out. This time it's Tom Dashel in line to head the Department of Health and Human Services. Stashel was already facing questions about the money he's made. He made 5 million over the last two years. Some of that from the healthcare industry which he would regulate if confirmed. And now he's facing questions about some earnings on which he didn't pay taxes.

39:09 >> That's one kind of professional. That's one kind of federal federalization professionalization strategy. But President Bush uh moved on this adopted it uh with full force that this was the path centralization federalization. For the first time airport security will become a direct federal responsibility overseen by a new under secretary of transportation for security. Additional funds will be provided for federal air marshals, and a new team of federal security managers, supervisors, law enforcement officers, and screeners will ensure all passengers and carry-on bags are inspected thoroughly and effectively. Security comes first.

40:01 The federal government will set high standards and we will enforce them. >> Nice words. I don't tend to turn to the federal government for high standards. I don't know anyone who does other than dubious lobbying hack Tom Dashel. Uh it's nice. We should want our government to have high standards if we're going to have a government. High standards are good. Uh but you need competition to keep standards high.

40:32 That's what competition is for. Instead, what we have gotten since the creation of the TSA is reaction and whack-a-ole, responding reactively to each weird attack that would take place, layering on the fight for the last battle, one new battle at a time. Throughout the years, TSA has had to adapt to the everanging terrorist threat against aviation and ground transportation. In 2001, after the attempted shoe bomb by Richard Reid, TSA established enhanced footwear screening procedures. In 2006, based on intelligence pointing to a continued threat, TSA required all passengers to remove shoes to be screened for explosives. Later that year, in another foiled terrorist plot, terrorists attempted to detonate liquid explosives that were carried on board 10 airlines traveling from the UK to the United States and Canada. In response, TSA banned all liquids in all carry-on bags and later introduced the 311 liquids rule. In 2009, while on board a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, al-Qaeda extremist Umar Farooq Abdul Mutalab tried to detonate an improvised explosive device concealed in his underwear. As a result, TSA began installing hundreds of advanced imaging technology units at US airports. These units, also known as full body scanners, are designed to detect non- metallic weapons, explosives, and other possible threats. These technologies have in fact come a long way. I remember at the early days of these scanners, there was a company Rapus Scan that was a little more like scan.

42:22 They would generate fullon naked pictures of you as you went through and that was one of the many TSA scandals we've had to confront over the past 20 years. Um, I will give TSA credit that it has actually gotten better in general. The technology is pretty advanced now. They have these CAT scan 3D things. What one could argue is that the TSA, for all of its mistakes, for all of its expense, for all of its inefficiency and its silly YouTube and its entanglements with politics, it has solved a problem that used to be a big problem, which was, namely, hijackings. Because what most people don't really know if they're my age or younger is that we actually used to have a lot of hijackings in this country. In fact, there was a golden age of hijackings. Now, we're used to arriving over an hour before our flight knowing that security is going to be a nightmare. What if we told you that people used to arrive shortly before their flight took off without any identification? Airline security has upped their game for a reason. While aircraft hijackings weren't unheard of during the previous decades, they became increasingly rampant in the60s.

43:35 According to the Associated Press in 1969, the US saw one plane hijacking every 6 days during the height of the crisis. One hijacked plane every 6 days in the US. Think about that. Imagine every 6 days there's a hijacked commercial airliner for ransom, for terror, for all kinds of crazy stuff. This was what was going on in the late60s and early '7s. Did you know there was a time when plane hijackings became so common, it was called the golden age of hijackings. During this period, planes were taken left and right, turning routine flights into wild detours.

44:15 Hijackers with motives ranging from political agendas to outlandish demands ruled the skies. From 1968 to 1972, hijacking wasn't just a possibility. It was almost promised. This was the golden age of hijackings, a time when there were a staggering 305 hijackings globally. In the United States specifically, more than 130 American airplanes were hijacked during this same time frame with incidents sometimes occurring multiple times in a single day. All in all, from May 1961 until the end of 1972, the US saw 159 hijacking incidents with the majority occurring between 1968 and 1972. So prota advocate, you might say, "Hey, now we don't have that happen anymore." the TSA worked. This is the precautionary principle in action. It's expensive, but it's a price worth paying. The the problem with that argument and the question of whether the price is worth paying at that price point is that these hijackings were actually almost entirely stopped long before the '9s in fact by a relatively simple number of requirements and upping the game of the airlines themselves. As this video stated earlier, uh it used to be easy to go on airplanes. You used to just show up. You could wait at the gate. You could actually be waiting for your loved one inside the airport. At the gate, there's countless movie scenes of people meeting their families at the gate. It's way more dramatic. It's way better than today where you're down by baggage claim or circling around the cell phone lot being waved away by traffic control.

46:10 That was the stuff that started to change. And it changed privately. It all changed mostly privately. There were some FAA regulations, but it was mostly just the the airlines not wanting to have their planes hijacked. And it took care of it. By the '90s, there were no hijackings going on anymore until, of course, 9/11. Um, so let's talk about the cost because this whole thing is a budget question, right? And so I actually went and looked a little closer at the cost and ran a couple numbers to try to understand what is going on and what might an alternative look like to the TSA, one that isn't so subject to political nonsense.

46:52 And so I looked at the fiscal 2025 summaries and crunched a couple numbers. So we will go through this. It's nerd time here at Dad Saves America. I know some of you really like this part when I do it. All right, the total budget for the TSA, which is not just airlines, it also includes other uh travel and uh rail and things like that, shipping, there's other elements of the transportation system that TSA secures, but the bulk of it is airline security.

47:24 Their total budget is 11.8 billion with a B dollars. That's a lot of zeros. The staff, the cost of the staff is estimated at around 8 billion. So that's about 68% of the cost, which isn't crazy as an enterprise goes to have your labor costs be around 60 to 70%. That's not outrageous. So you basically have about 32% of non labor costs. The total staff of the TSA is about 65,000 people and and so that works out in basic average to $123,000 per employee in total. Now that includes the administrative cost, that includes their healthy benefits because they're federal employees and they get very large benefit packages. But actually the median salary for a typical TSA agent is around 60 to 70 grand if they've been there for about 5 years or so. So it's not like they're making 123 grand. This is the total cost including everything.

48:38 Airport screeners, there's about 50,000. So most of the staff are these airport focused people. And that makes sense because there's about 440 airports that they that the TSA secures and there's 28,000 flights per day. So when you look at that and you say, "Okay, 50,000 airport security folks at 123 grand ahead." Well, that ends up being around $22 million when you add the overhead overall back in on top of it because I think you got to account for that if you're just going to isolate just TSA. So, I'm doing a little fudge factor there, but that works out to a cost per flight for the TSA services of about 800 bucks. Let's say 7 to 800. If you just do a straight 123 uh grand time 50, you get 16 million and it works out to about 700. So you can use that range.

49:42 There is a fee established on your air travel by the uh the law that was passed to create the TSA called the September 11th fee. It is $560 per flight per person and there is an average of around 125 passengers per flight. So that works out to about 700 bucks in fees collected by the TSA for in theory the purposes of the TSA per flight. So So what's this mean? Why am I showing you this?

50:20 I'm showing you this because it's pretty clear to me that you could sell this whole thing off. Why not privatize it? 700 bucks for flight out of, you know, $560. That's not that much money per person. And it's a business. And it's actually a business that is currently run in several places in the United States because there is a provision of the law that allows airports to opt out of the TSA and provide TSA approved private screening. This is not done in a large scale, but it is a counter example to the current TSA. And uh well, it turns out it works pretty well like it used to.

51:05 Well, happening now, we focused on this all morning. TSA agents continue working without pay following the partial government shutdown. Of course, as days go on, more are calling out sick, leading to some really long lines at airports across the country. We've seen four hours at two airports we've checked in with today. Uh there are airports though that allow contractors to handle passenger screenings that do it privately. Let's bring in George Speak Jr. He is the executive vice president and the deputy CEO at Sanport Sanford Airport Authority. George, good to see you this morning. Good morning.

51:33 >> Good to see you. Thank you for having So, let's talk about the difference. You guys have done this for a number of years now where even though they follow TSA guidelines, it is a private contracting system that you use. >> That's correct. Um, you know, it it provides the exact same level of security that federal screeners do. They go through the exact same training. Um, but uh the government shutdown is not affecting them because they are paid by contract versus the employees being through TSA.

51:55 >> And I believe 20 airports do this. San Francisco being the biggest. How has it worked out uh over the years? And maybe with these issues we've seen, maybe lead more airports to go that direction. >> Sure. So, airports opt into this u and we can opt back out every 5 years if we wanted to. We've re-uped now for our third time around. So, we believe it's a perfect fit for Sanford. It provides a great level of customer service, but also provides the same level of security.

52:20 >> What was it that led you 11 years ago to go this route versus TSA? >> Customer service, you know, we call ourselves simpler, faster, better. SFP is our threeletter identifier. So, simpler, faster, better. And we felt like this was part of being simpler, faster, and better, providing that smooth, quick uh experience. Our wait times average about 10 minutes. Even right now, six months ago, 10 minutes. So, no, no, no change for us. >> 10-minute wait times, dramatically better service, faster service with the same fundamental standards being applied. This is not an accident. This is not selective. It's not a one-off. In fact, the National Bureau of Economic Research, the NBER, which is also the organization that is the official ones to say if we're in an in a recession or not. They are the ones that basically keep track. They conducted a study on privatized air traffic control and airport security and generally airport infrastructure and found that of course it's better.

53:21 It's better along every dimension. Uh, it's faster, cheaper, more it's more efficient. It delivers better service. You get more flights per day when it's all run privately. They everything works faster. It's higher quality. That means supply goes up, more flights per day, prices come down. So, it's cheaper, it's faster, it's better because competition. In fact, one of the pull quotes out of this report is that when private equity funds by airports from governments, the number of airlines and routes served increases, operating incomes rise because they're serving more flights, and the customer experience improves.

54:04 This should be surprising to no one that understands the way competition works. Competition forces you to economize, to try to do more with less, and to try to do it better. This is the basic reason why free enterprise delivers the goods that communism never could even in theory. And what we have in the US when it comes to air travel in general is more communistic than most of Western Europe. We have entirely city-owned or state-owned airports. We have entirely federally owned and run airport security and air traffic control. Canada has privatized air traffic control public private partnerships for airports and as well as for security. So does the United Kingdom. So does Germany. So does many other places on this planet. For whatever reason, the deregulation that started under Jimmy Carter that brought air travel prices down dramatically and and gave rise to new airlines like Southwest and Frontier and C JetBlue and countless others that allowed competition to democratize air travel stopped there.

55:19 But when you see all this stuff going on and you're waiting in line at TSA frustrated, there is an actual thing we can do about this. Not me and you because we're not politicians. We don't have control over policy, but as voters, as citizens, we need to know this because we're never going to get improvement unless enough of the public realizes that there are options. And the option is to sell all this stuff off. Early in the video, President Trump was talking about the SAVE Act, about identity protection. And I have been thinking about this recently because with all of the fraud happening in our social welfare programs, not just in Minnesota with the Somali, although they're particularly egregious and intense about the fraud, uh given that their country is the bottom on corruption on planet Earth, it's understandable. It is a culture of corruption. But that culture of corruption is vast and it includes California as we've seen in the news recently.

56:24 All you'd need to do to have all of this stuff work a whole lot better, access to our welfare programs, voter identification, airport security, is just turn it over to a company like American Express. American Express and companies like it. And I I am I am not this is not sponsored, but I've had an MX card for a long time. They're an incredible company. I really like them. They take care of problems. They also help you book flights. They're great. And the s the second anything goes wrong, they detect it right away and they solve it for you because they have an incentive to do it. Because if you lose money with American Express, you can go to any number of alternatives. And so they've gotten incredibly good at verifying who you are and that you are who you say you are, which even if you're a progressive Democrat that believes in a large so social welfare state, you should, if you're intellectually honest, want that.

57:28 You should want American Express to be handed the keys to keeping these programs solvent, keeping our critical infrastructure working. But unfortunately, ideological possession gets in the way of reality and practical solutions. So that is my practical solution for us today. Turn over most of what the feds are trying to do to AMX. Hey, it's got American in the title. What could be better? And it would definitely be more express. I guarantee it as we've seen in real life. But let me know what you think. Is this too free market for you or you're uncomfortable with this private equity talk? Is it making you feel like, oh, the evil corporations are going to run away with the goods? Let me know in the comments down below. Head over to dadsavesamea.com where you can get links to some of the references and resources that went into making this video. Of course, if you want to support us, you can uh hit that merch shelf down below and buy this mug and the t-shirt and all kinds of cool stuff.

58:31 And of course, have a great weekend.