If you’re planning to fly this summer, you’ll want to budget hours, not minutes, for getting through TSA.
Budget cuts in the government’s airport security agency have meant staffing shortages at major airports across the U.S., and lines at TSA checkpoints are getting longer and longer. Some are even suggesting that the TSA be eliminated and that airports be made to contract their own security and set their own policies.
What would airport security look like without TSA? Is privatizing airport security a viable option in a post-9/11 world? Would Congress buy in?
Guests:
Benjamin Powell, senior fellow at the Independent Institute, an Oakland, California-based think tank and the director of the Free Market Institute at Texas Tech University; he recently wrote an op-ed for the New York Post called “The only solution to TSA’s problems: Get rid of it”
Kip Hawley, former director of the Transportation Security Administration and co-author of the book “Permanent Emergency: Inside the TSA and the Fight for the Future of American Security” (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2013); he tweets