Federal Checkpoints, Congressional Theater
When Department of Homeland Security funding lapsed this week, roughly 61,000 TSA screeners reported to airport checkpoints across the country without paychecks, according to agency workforce data. Meanwhile, FAA air traffic controllers, working the same flights, in the same airports, continued receiving their salaries. The rest of the federal government remains funded through September 30. The divergence isn't a budgeting accident. It's a design flaw baked into airport security since Congress created TSA after September 11, 2001.
TSA Acting Administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill warned lawmakers this would happen if DHS appropriations lapsed, according to testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee. About 95% of TSA workers carry the "essential personnel" designation, which sounds protective until you realize it means they're legally required to work without pay while Congress fights over immigration policy, the actual dispute blocking the DHS funding bill.
The Architectural Error
The United States is the only major aviation market that federalized airport security screening, according to International Civil Aviation Organization governance data. When Congress established TSA through the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, it merged two incompatible functions: operating checkpoint screening and regulating airport security. TSA both runs the metal detectors and writes the rules for how metal detectors should be run. Every other aspect of airport security, perimeter fencing, lobby access control, law enforcement presence, remains the responsibility of individual airports under TSA regulatory oversight. Only the checkpoints themselves became a federal operation.
Europe took a different path. Airport operators there handle security screening the same way they handle baggage systems or gate assignments: as operational infrastructure essential to running the facility. When budget disputes erupt in Berlin or Paris, the security checkpoints keep running because they're not tethered to national legislative battles.
The American model creates a structural vulnerability. Immigration disputes in Washington can close checkpoints in Boise. A congressional standoff over border wall funding can ground flights in Atlanta. The system treats a local operational necessity, getting passengers through security so planes can depart on schedule, as if it were a discretionary federal program subject to annual appropriations theater.
The Predictable Cascade
This isn't theoretical. During the 43-day federal shutdown spanning 2018 and 2019, Philadelphia International Airport temporarily closed two checkpoints when unpaid TSA workers called in sick at higher rates than normal, according to airport operations reports. The government eventually ordered airlines to reduce domestic flight schedules. Passengers missed flights. Regional economies dependent on air connectivity absorbed the damage.
The current shutdown hits during spring break travel season, when passenger volumes climb and checkpoint staffing margins tighten. Even a handful of unscheduled absences at smaller airports, facilities with single security checkpoints, can create bottlenecks that ripple through entire flight networks. Airlines delay departures waiting for passengers stuck in security lines. Checked baggage screening slows when screeners don't show up. The operational fragility compounds.
Historically, Congress approves back pay after shutdowns end, as documented in the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019. The screeners eventually get paid. The flights eventually depart. But the exercise accomplishes nothing except demonstrating that the system was designed to fail under predictable political conditions.
Separating Function from Governance
Marc Scribner at the Reason Foundation outlined legislation that would separate checkpoint operations from security regulation in policy analysis published this year. The proposal doesn't eliminate federal oversight, TSA would still set screening standards, conduct audits, and enforce compliance. But airports or contractors would run the actual checkpoints, the same way they run every other piece of terminal infrastructure.
The resistance to this model isn't primarily about security effectiveness. It's about institutional inertia and the political symbolism of federal control. TSA's dual role as both operator and regulator creates the conflict of interest, but it also creates bureaucratic territory that agencies don't surrender easily. The current shutdown makes the case for structural reform more clearly than any policy paper could.
When you design a system where local infrastructure depends on federal appropriations battles over unrelated policy disputes, you've built failure into the architecture. The question isn't whether the system will break. It's how much damage it does each time Congress decides to test it.
Who Bears the Cost
The 61,000 screeners working without pay aren't making a choice. They're designated essential, which means showing up is legally required under federal personnel regulations. Missing work could mean losing the job entirely when funding resumes. The families planning spring break trips aren't making a choice either, they booked flights months ago, before anyone knew which legislative dispute would trigger the next shutdown.
Small airports face the sharpest operational risk. A facility with one checkpoint and a dozen screeners has no redundancy. Two or three workers calling in sick can close the checkpoint entirely, stranding passengers and canceling flights. Larger hubs have more buffer, but the math still tightens when absenteeism climbs among workers facing mortgage payments and grocery bills with no paycheck in sight.
The damage isn't distributed evenly. Regional economies dependent on air connectivity, tourist destinations, business hubs without alternative transportation, absorb disproportionate hits when checkpoint closures force schedule reductions. The shutdown doesn't just inconvenience travelers. It reveals which communities are structurally vulnerable to a design flaw in how America decided to run airport security 25 years ago.
The Path Forward
The significance extends beyond immediate operational disruptions. This shutdown reveals how infrastructure governance decisions made in crisis mode can create permanent vulnerabilities. Other countries treat airport security as essential infrastructure insulated from political budget cycles, not because they care less about security, but because they recognized the operational risk of tying local airport functions to national appropriations battles.
Reform would require congressional action to restructure TSA's statutory authority, separating its regulatory function from checkpoint operations. The agency would retain standard-setting power while transferring operational responsibility to airports or contractors, similar to the existing Screening Partnership Program that allows limited private screening at select airports under TSA oversight. Expanding this model would require amending the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, a legislative lift that demands political will currently absent from congressional leadership.
The alternative is accepting recurring shutdowns as the price of the current structure. Each funding lapse tests whether screeners will continue working without pay, whether airports can maintain operations with reduced staff, and whether the traveling public will tolerate the disruption. Eventually, one of these variables will break more dramatically than Philadelphia's checkpoint closures in 2019, forcing the structural conversation Congress has avoided for two decades.
The Lesson Ignored
Congress created TSA in crisis mode after the September 11 attacks, prioritizing speed over structural coherence. A quarter-century later, the agency remains trapped in that original design: a federal operation performing a local function, subject to budget battles that have nothing to do with aviation security.
The current shutdown will end. Funding will resume, back pay will get approved, and checkpoint operations will return to normal. Until the next appropriations fight, when the same structural flaw will produce the same predictable failure.
Philadelphia's checkpoints closed during the last long shutdown. This time, it could be Phoenix or Charlotte or any airport where screeners decide they can't afford to work for free while lawmakers negotiate over immigration policy.