By David Shepardson and Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON, March 26 (Reuters) – President Donald Trump said on Thursday he will take executive action to pay 50,000 airport security workers as a deal stalled in Congress to address staff shortages that have snarled travel around the country.
Trump said he was instructing the Homeland Security Department “to immediately pay our TSA Agents in order to address this Emergency Situation, and to quickly stop the Democrat Chaos at the Airports. It is not an easy thing to do, but I am going to do it!”
Nearly 500 airport security officers have quit since the start of a partial government shutdown in February, the Homeland Security Department said, as a congressional dispute over the department’s funding forces Transportation Security Administration officers to work without pay.
It is unclear how long the funding will last or if Trump is tapping funding for the Homeland Security Department approved last year as part of a massive tax and spending bill.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune called Trump’s move “a short-term solution,” but he did not mention the duration of the TSA paychecks.
Representative Bennie Thompson, top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, said it is not clear how Trump plans to pay TSA officers legally.
Chris Sununu, CEO of airline trade group Airlines for America, praised the solution “to pay tens of thousands of dedicated TSA officers for the important job they do” but added “it’s critical for lawmakers to enact a permanent solution to ensure this chaos never happens again.
Democrats in Congress have held up funding for DHS while demanding a change in rules governing its immigration operations, after agents in Minneapolis shot and killed U.S. citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Republicans have rejected repeated Democratic proposals to fund TSA separately while negotiating over reforms for how Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents operate.
Thune said he still wants to pass legislation funding “everything within DHS,” which includes the Coast Guard, Federal Emergency Management Agency and other operations.
“The Democrats have made it very clear they have no interest in funding any of the law enforcement functions” of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Thune said.
Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, the senior Democrat on a homeland security appropriations panel, told reporters that up until Trump’s announcement, “We made progress today … We’ve been actively talking all day, trading offers all day.”
The TSA reiterated on Wednesday that the agency could be forced to close smaller airports if staffing issues worsened.
More than 11% of TSA officers, or 3,120 agents, did not show up for work on Wednesday, while much higher absentee rates of 30% or more were seen at New York’s JFK, Houston’s two airports, and airports in Baltimore, New Orleans and Atlanta.
Senate Republicans and Democrats continue to debate a proposal that would allow funding to resume for TSA and other Department of Homeland Security agencies while keeping some immigration enforcement funding on hold.
TSA is grappling with a school spring-break travel surge that is about 5% higher in volume than last year’s. Absences have spiked above 10% in recent days, leading to hours-long delays to get through security checkpoints at some airports.
Hundreds of U.S. immigration agents and Homeland Security Investigations officers began deploying at 14 U.S. airports on Monday to aid security screening.
Some of those agents are now checking IDs with TSA equipment, guarding entrances and exits, assisting with logistics, and engaging in crowd control.
ICE and other law enforcement personnel at DHS are getting paid during the shutdown.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Edmund Klamann, Lisa Shumaker and Stephen Coates)
Comments