At a House Homeland Security committee hearing yesterday, ostensibly to examine the “lessons” of Flight 253, those of us in the audience got another lesson in dysfunctional government policy making.
Rep. Peter DeFazio, the Oregon Democrat not known for mincing words, said it best: “We need a TSA Administrator,” he barked at a trio of witnesses who had the unenviable task of defending the administration’s response to the attempted Xmas day bombing of an airliner. “Can’t we just get it done?”
He's right! This isn’t the Farm Credit Administration we’re talking about here. It’s the agency that is supposed to protect our citizens from another 9/11 attack. It’s a critical post and needs someone with the expertise and political clout to get the attention of those who hold the purse strings.
But as in all matters Capitol Hill-related, things aren't so simple.
The long vacancy in the boss’ office at Transportation Security Administration was already a scandal even
before the failed attack. It has been a year since the previous
administrator, Kip Hawley, resigned along with the other political
appointees in the Homeland Security department-the usual ritual to
allow an incoming administration to pick its own team.
The White House took eight months to name someone for the hot-seat job: a former FBI agent, Erroll Southers, who helped run security at LAX airport. Southers was clearly well-qualified, but ran into trouble when some Republicans objected to President Obama’s campaign promise to allow TSA officers to unionize, allowing a single Senator, Jim De Mint, to hold up the confirmation. There were other problems in Southers’ past and the sorry saga concluded last week when a beleaguered Southers took himself out of contention.
All this could be dismissed as the usual inside the Beltway machinations-nominees get derailed all the times, sometimes unfairly, but life goes on. Often federal posts are left vacant for months or years-and the TSA job has been helmed by ‘acting’ administrators-place-holders who don’t need Senate confirmation-several times in its eight-year history. Currently that spot is held by Gale Rossides, a well-regarded bureaucrat who’s been with the agency since the beginning.
The outrage at the vacancy is bipartisan: Rep. Peter King, Republican of New York, complained “I still can’t determine who is in charge and who makes the decisions” in the nation’s security apparatus. “We used to have [ex-Homeland Security head Michael] Chertoff out front. We used to have Hawley out front.” After Dec. 25, King said, “we expected more.”
Unfortunately, yesterday’s hearing suggested it’ll be many months before this gets resolved.
TSA, naturally, didn’t send anyone, and the DHS deputy who attended, Jane Lute, was pounded for everything from the failure to put the Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on the no fly or selectee list to the failure of her boss, Janet Napolitano, to show up at the hearing herself, even though she was in town. When DeFazio proposed that the administration should just forge ahead and allow screeners to unionize first, then appoint a new chief who would free of that baggage-the response was stunned silence.
To be sure, DeFazio’s idea is unrealistic in the current climate. Opposition to a screeners’ union is, if anything, intensifying in some quarters-especially after a series of embarrassing snafus that have led to terminal evacuations-most notoriously, at Newark, where a screener briefly walked away from his post, allowing a man to enter the secure area through an exit lane.
More recently, a screener in Philadelphia planted a bag of white powder in the carry on bag of a young passenger as a “prank”, supposedly as part of a test of screeners’ skills in detecting dangerous substances. TSA quickly condemned the actions of the screener, who has since “departed.” But such cases give more ammunition to the opponents of the union drive who claim that TSA has to be able to fire or reassign officers without a union in the way.
Supporters of the union argue that other law enforcement agencies have collective bargaining rights and there’s no evidence that it has impaired their effectiveness. All well and good-but is this the time to have this debate?
Some members of Congress are pushing to make the TSA job a ten-year appointment-presumably freeing it from politics. A laudable idea, which would likely doom it-but it’s a start.
Related Stories on Truth.Travel
Announcing the Kermit Tyler Award for America the Unready
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Fearing the Fear Related to the Dec. 25 Terrorist Attempt
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New TSA rules: Déjà Vu All Over Again
The White House took eight months to name someone for the hot-seat job: a former FBI agent, Erroll Southers, who helped run security at LAX airport. Southers was clearly well-qualified, but ran into trouble when some Republicans objected to President Obama’s campaign promise to allow TSA officers to unionize, allowing a single Senator, Jim De Mint, to hold up the confirmation. There were other problems in Southers’ past and the sorry saga concluded last week when a beleaguered Southers took himself out of contention.
All this could be dismissed as the usual inside the Beltway machinations-nominees get derailed all the times, sometimes unfairly, but life goes on. Often federal posts are left vacant for months or years-and the TSA job has been helmed by ‘acting’ administrators-place-holders who don’t need Senate confirmation-several times in its eight-year history. Currently that spot is held by Gale Rossides, a well-regarded bureaucrat who’s been with the agency since the beginning.
The outrage at the vacancy is bipartisan: Rep. Peter King, Republican of New York, complained “I still can’t determine who is in charge and who makes the decisions” in the nation’s security apparatus. “We used to have [ex-Homeland Security head Michael] Chertoff out front. We used to have Hawley out front.” After Dec. 25, King said, “we expected more.”
Unfortunately, yesterday’s hearing suggested it’ll be many months before this gets resolved.
TSA, naturally, didn’t send anyone, and the DHS deputy who attended, Jane Lute, was pounded for everything from the failure to put the Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on the no fly or selectee list to the failure of her boss, Janet Napolitano, to show up at the hearing herself, even though she was in town. When DeFazio proposed that the administration should just forge ahead and allow screeners to unionize first, then appoint a new chief who would free of that baggage-the response was stunned silence.
To be sure, DeFazio’s idea is unrealistic in the current climate. Opposition to a screeners’ union is, if anything, intensifying in some quarters-especially after a series of embarrassing snafus that have led to terminal evacuations-most notoriously, at Newark, where a screener briefly walked away from his post, allowing a man to enter the secure area through an exit lane.
More recently, a screener in Philadelphia planted a bag of white powder in the carry on bag of a young passenger as a “prank”, supposedly as part of a test of screeners’ skills in detecting dangerous substances. TSA quickly condemned the actions of the screener, who has since “departed.” But such cases give more ammunition to the opponents of the union drive who claim that TSA has to be able to fire or reassign officers without a union in the way.
Supporters of the union argue that other law enforcement agencies have collective bargaining rights and there’s no evidence that it has impaired their effectiveness. All well and good-but is this the time to have this debate?
Some members of Congress are pushing to make the TSA job a ten-year appointment-presumably freeing it from politics. A laudable idea, which would likely doom it-but it’s a start.
Related Stories on Truth.Travel
Announcing the Kermit Tyler Award for America the Unready
Who Really Picked Seat 19A?
Fearing the Fear Related to the Dec. 25 Terrorist Attempt
What About the Baggage Below?
New TSA rules: Déjà Vu All Over Again
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