The Transportation Security Administration is staring down a funding cliff that could throw the nation’s airports into disarray — and the source of the threat isn’t a terrorist plot or a cyberattack. It’s a budget bill.
The Save America Act, a sweeping Republican reconciliation package working its way through Congress, contains provisions that would slash Department of Homeland Security funding by roughly $70 billion over the next decade. Buried in those cuts is a provision that could effectively defund TSA operations at airports across the country, according to internal agency assessments and congressional analyses reviewed by multiple outlets. The result, current and former officials warn, would be chaos at security checkpoints — longer lines, fewer screeners, and a transportation system struggling to function at a moment when summer travel demand is surging toward record highs.
Business Insider reported that TSA officials have been quietly preparing contingency plans for a scenario in which the agency’s budget is gutted as part of the broader reconciliation effort. The agency screens approximately 2.5 million passengers per day at more than 430 airports nationwide, and any significant reduction in staffing would create bottlenecks that ripple across the entire aviation system.
The numbers are stark. TSA’s current annual budget hovers around $11 billion. The proposed DHS cuts would force the agency to reduce its workforce of roughly 60,000 Transportation Security Officers, the frontline screeners who check IDs, run bags through X-ray machines, and operate body scanners. Fewer officers means fewer open lanes. Fewer open lanes means longer waits. And longer waits mean missed flights, frustrated travelers, and airlines scrambling to adjust schedules.
This isn’t hypothetical. It’s happened before.
In 2016, TSA staffing shortages led to wait times exceeding three hours at Chicago O’Hare International Airport. Passengers missed flights. Airlines had to hold planes at gates. The dysfunction was so severe that American Airlines reportedly stationed cots in terminals for stranded travelers. Congress responded by authorizing emergency overtime funding and accelerating the hiring of new officers. The crisis eventually subsided, but the memory lingers among aviation industry executives who see the current budget fight as a potential replay — only worse.
The Save America Act’s DHS provisions are part of a broader effort to offset the cost of extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts and funding new border security measures. Republican lawmakers have argued that DHS can absorb significant budget reductions by eliminating waste and consolidating programs. But critics, including some Republicans representing districts with major airports, have pushed back. TSA, they note, isn’t a bloated bureaucracy ripe for trimming. It’s an agency that already operates on thin margins, with screener pay that has historically lagged behind comparable federal positions and turnover rates that have at times exceeded 20 percent annually.
The Biden administration raised TSA screener pay in 2023, bringing starting salaries closer to $40,000 and narrowing the gap with other federal law enforcement positions. That move helped reduce attrition and improved morale, according to the American Federation of Government Employees, the union representing TSA workers. But the pay increases were funded through annual appropriations, not permanent authorization — meaning they’re vulnerable to exactly the kind of budget cuts now under consideration.
“If you cut TSA’s budget by the amounts being discussed, you’re not just reducing a line item on a spreadsheet,” a former senior DHS official told reporters. “You’re telling the American public that getting through airport security is going to take a lot longer, and you’re telling TSA officers that the pay raises they just got might disappear.”
Airlines are watching closely. The industry trade group Airlines for America has not publicly commented on the specific reconciliation provisions, but individual carriers have been lobbying congressional offices behind the scenes, according to people familiar with the discussions. Their concern is straightforward: anything that degrades the airport experience drives customers toward alternatives or discourages travel altogether. And the financial stakes are enormous. U.S. airlines generated more than $250 billion in revenue in 2024, and summer travel season — now just weeks away — accounts for a disproportionate share of annual profits.
The politics here are tangled. President Trump has championed the Save America Act as a vehicle for his domestic policy priorities, including tax relief and immigration enforcement. But the DHS funding cuts create an awkward tension within his own coalition. Republican members from suburban districts — places like the exurbs of Dallas, Atlanta, and Phoenix, where constituents fly frequently for business and leisure — are hearing from angry travelers who remember the TSA lines of 2016 and don’t want a repeat.
Some GOP lawmakers have floated the idea of shielding TSA from the deepest cuts while still achieving overall DHS savings through reductions to other components, such as FEMA grants or the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. But those agencies have their own constituencies and defenders on Capitol Hill, making the math difficult.
There’s also a security dimension that goes beyond convenience. TSA exists because of September 11th. Before the attacks, airport screening was handled by private contractors hired by airlines — a system widely regarded as inadequate. The creation of TSA in November 2001 was one of the largest federal workforce expansions in American history, driven by a bipartisan consensus that aviation security was too important to leave to the lowest bidder. Cutting the agency’s funding to levels that compromise its mission raises questions that extend well beyond wait times.
Former TSA Administrator David Pekoske, who led the agency under both Trump and Biden, has publicly warned against deep budget reductions. In a statement earlier this year, he said that TSA’s workforce “is the backbone of aviation security” and that any significant cuts would “directly impact the safety of the traveling public.” Current TSA leadership has been more circumspect, constrained by the administration’s support for the broader reconciliation package, but internal communications obtained by several news organizations suggest deep anxiety within the agency’s ranks.
The timing compounds the problem. TSA is in the middle of deploying new screening technology, including computed tomography scanners that produce three-dimensional images of carry-on bags and reduce the need for manual inspections. These machines cost roughly $300,000 each, and the agency has been rolling them out gradually to replace aging equipment at the nation’s busiest airports. A budget cut would almost certainly slow or halt that deployment, leaving screeners reliant on older, less capable technology that requires more time per bag — further lengthening lines.
And then there’s the workforce pipeline. TSA has been working to improve recruitment and retention after years of struggling to compete with private-sector employers, particularly in high-cost cities like San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles. The agency’s recent pay increases, combined with better benefits and a clearer career progression path, had begun to stabilize the workforce. A funding cut that reverses those gains would likely trigger a new wave of departures, and replacing experienced screeners takes months — new hires must complete a multi-week training program before they can work a checkpoint independently.
Congress has until the end of the fiscal year on September 30 to resolve the funding question, though the reconciliation timeline could push a final vote into the summer. In the meantime, TSA is operating under a continuing resolution that maintains current funding levels. But the uncertainty itself is damaging. Prospective hires are less likely to accept a federal job when the agency’s future budget is in question. Current employees are updating their resumes. And airport operators, who depend on TSA to keep terminals moving, are left planning for a scenario they can’t control.
The airline industry’s frustration is palpable. Carriers have spent billions upgrading terminals, adding routes, and improving the passenger experience — only to face the prospect of a government-created bottleneck at the front door. “You can have the most beautiful airport in the world,” one airline executive said, “but if it takes people two hours to get through security, none of that matters.”
So what happens next? The most likely outcome, according to congressional aides and budget analysts, is some form of compromise that reduces DHS spending but carves out partial protections for TSA. The agency’s visibility and the political toxicity of long airport lines give it a degree of insulation that less public-facing DHS components lack. But partial protection still means cuts — and even modest reductions could force the closure of screening lanes during off-peak hours, reduce overtime availability, and delay technology upgrades.
The worst-case scenario — a full implementation of the proposed cuts without any TSA carve-out — would be genuinely disruptive. Internal TSA modeling, described by sources familiar with the analysis, projects that average wait times at the 30 busiest U.S. airports could double or triple during peak travel periods. At airports like Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta, Los Angeles International, and Denver International, that could mean waits of 90 minutes or more during holiday weekends and summer Fridays.
For now, the traveling public remains largely unaware of the fight playing out on Capitol Hill. That will change quickly if the cuts take effect. Airport security lines are one of the most visceral, immediate ways Americans experience federal government performance. When those lines work, nobody thinks about them. When they don’t, everybody does.
The Save America Act may ultimately save taxpayers money. But if it breaks TSA in the process, the cost — measured in missed flights, economic disruption, and diminished security — could be far higher than anything on the federal ledger.
WebProNews is an iEntry Publication