As Americans prepare for summer vacations and trips to visit family and friends, there is a good chance they will be subjected to a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) screening system that is so badly mismanaged it has drawn comparisons to Comedy Central’s South Park. 

So far, 2016 has been plagued by maddeningly long lines for passengers going through TSA security checkpoints.  American Airlines estimated that at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, the “nightmarish” lines led to 4,000 passengers missing flights at that airport alone since February.  Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Jeh Johnson’s response was to tell passengers on May 13, 2016 to adapt to the new normal:  “Contemplate increased wait times as you travel.”  Secretary Johnson also assured air travelers that TSA would be asking airports for help with insignificant “nonsecurity” activities like moving bins that carry laptops, shoes, and other items through scanners.

Former TSA Deputy Administrator Tom Blank pinned the blame for the long lines on the mismanagement of TSA staff:  “TSA has made bad assumptions about the level of personnel resources necessary to process the two million passengers a day that come through.”  Blank is referring to TSA PreCheck, which allows passengers to bypass more intense security if they pay an $85 fee and provide a fingerprint and other background information.  TSA projected 25 million people would opt in to this program, but to date less than three million have joined.

Before taxpayers fall for the knee-jerk bureaucratic notion that every federal failure is the fault of a lack of funding or resources, consider these simple facts:  TSA’s fiscal year (FY) 2016 budget of $7.3 billion is one billion dollars and 16 percent higher than in FY 2007.  TSA’s full-time workforce rose by 4.3 percent over the last decade, even as air travel at major airports decreased.  To date, 22 airports have dropped TSA and switched to more cost-effective, flexible, and efficient private alternatives.  The massive lines of outraged passengers have caused airports in Atlanta, New York, and Seattle to announce they would like to privatize security as well.

Even as fewer passengers travel by air and TSA has fewer airports to manage, the overall effectiveness of screenings has fallen to perilous levels.  A June 1, 2015 DHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) report found that undercover investigators were able to sneak “mock explosives or banned weapons” through security checkpoints in 95 percent of trials.

A May 7, 2015 report found that TSA wasted $40 million when it was forced by public outrage to stop using invasive full body scanners in 2012.  Now, 250 unused scanners are sitting in government warehouses in San Antonio.

A November 3, 2015 OIG report found that TSA’s behavioral threat detection program, which has received $900 million since 2007, “is both expensive and ineffective. … TSA could not ensure that passengers were screened objectively, nor could it show that the program was cost effective or merited expansion.” 

TSA’s security fiascos are not only on the passenger side.  A June 9, 2015 OIG report found that agency officials failed to find 73 agency employees that were also on the terrorism watch list. 

On February 3, 2016, TSA’s OIG disclosed that the agency cannot verify employees’ criminal histories or immigration statuses and that thousands of TSA IDs have gone missing in recent years. 

As the list of incompetence piles up at TSA, the American public has many valid reasons to be at a “breaking point” with the agency.  The seminal problem for TSA is not lack of funding or staff, it is the consistent mismanagement of those funds and that staff which directly leads to poor performance and waste of taxpayer dollars.  No matter how TSA spins its failures, it remains a gigantic, inefficient, monopolistic federal bureaucracy. 

The solution to this chronic problem is to allow all individual airports to have full autonomy to choose the best way to provide security and screening.  Canada and Europe already have this model and U.S. airports have successfully implemented it as well.  While well-intentioned, America’s disappointing experiment with a bloated federal aviation security bureaucracy should end, and America’s air passengers will be safer and happier for it.