TSA: Another Airline Subsidy
Smart post by Bill Fisher over at the anti-TSA TSANewsBlog:
Before 2001, the airlines were responsible for providing airport security; the costs were included in the base fare structure. After TSA's formation, taxpayers assumed the responsibility for the bulk of the cost of federally mandated and staffed airport checkpoints.The TSA now costs Americans $8 billion a year and has cost approximately $60 billion since its inception. The FY 2012 Consolidated Spending Act (Public Law 112-074), signed into law in December, appropriated $7.85 billion to TSA, an increase of $153 million from 2011, and included funding to expand the deployment of body scanners to smaller airports.
What has gone largely unreported is that all of this taxpayer expense has effectively amounted to a subsidy of the airline industry and is borne by many who seldom if ever fly. While an airline ticket now includes a $2.50 security fee (and that fee is about to go higher), up from $2 in earlier years, this is miniscule in comparison to the true cost associated with one passenger screening.
Based on the 2011 TSA budget of $8.1 billion and enplanements of 712 million passengers, the total cost per screening is $11.38, with the taxpayer contributing $8.88 of that for every airline passenger boarding an aircraft in the US. When the cost is distributed across the 144 million taxpayers in the US, the TSA adds an additional $43.86 to each household tax return.
If viewed in terms of the 7.15 million flights in the US in 2011, the security subsidy costs taxpayers an average of $1,133 per flight.
The major airlines are the primary beneficiaries of this government largesse. The 10 largest carriers received $4.8 billion in free airport security in 2011 while posting a collective profit of only $1.7 billion.
I'd love to see Bill Fisher try to guesstimate Chertoff's profits from the pornoscanners.
Chertoff, Boosh, Napolitano... Pick your poisonous personality, or consider them in some aggregate of a real-life nightmare.
Is there any doubt that these people have done more damage to American spirits –injuring and insulting HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of lives– than Osama Bin Laden could ever have dreamt of inflicting?
Is there anyone who will say out loud that OBL or Al Qaeda or any of those fuckups was more injurious to our country than these people have been? Can you put it in a sentence? Can your mouth form the words?
Crid [CridComment at gmail] at February 18, 2012 12:02 AM
Amy Alkon
https://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2012/02/tsa-another-air.html#comment-2985996">comment from Crid [CridComment at gmail]Is there any doubt that these people have done more damage to American spirits –injuring and insulting HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of lives– than Osama Bin Laden could ever have dreamt of inflicting?
So well put and absolutely right.
Amy Alkon
at February 18, 2012 4:23 AM
So, wait, what?
Doesn't that mean that airfares should have went DOWN once the airlines weren't paying?
DrCos at February 18, 2012 5:49 AM
All that needed to be done was to beef up and lock the cockpit doors.
The passengers have proven, since Flight 93, they can take care of the rest. If the flight crew has control of the aircraft, the flight attendants and passengers will take care of the nut job in seat 3B.
Jim P. at February 18, 2012 5:58 AM
This is approximately the dumbest paragraph I have ever read that isn't in Salon.
Jeff Guinn at February 18, 2012 12:11 PM
Crid, you make me think of that photoshop of a smiling Bin Laden telling a cohort, "And the TSA grabs their balls like THIS!" while holding out a cupped hand.
mpetrie98 at February 18, 2012 2:14 PM
I would argue that air security is a matter of public order and that everyone benefits from it, just as everyone benefits from highway patrolling (when it's done properly), and so it's a proper function of the government. Imagine how legally difficult it would be for airline-run security to coordinate with the intelligence agencies that are doing most of the good work in defending civil air transport. The TSA itself is the botch. It took what was a small and focused security function and turned it into a wide-open mandate with an unlimited charter and no restrictions on what it can stick its nose into. Before the TSA, the U.S. Marshals had the job of the flying-agent force, and the only thing wrong with it was that there wasn't enough of them.
Break up the Department of Homeland Security, assign the few really necessary functions to existing agencies, and get rid of the rest.
(I will point out that one reason the TSA and the DHS exist is because GW Bush couldn't trust the CIA. The Agency was spending more time trying to undercut Bush's agenda then they were doing the things that they were supposed to be doing. The proper response to this would have been to can all the leadership, put new people in, and empower the inspector general to clean out the vipers. However, the fifth columnists in Washington and the media would have screamed bloody murder, and the Democrats in Congress would have blocked the appointment of anyone who could have done the job. Creating the DHS and the Director of National Intelligence office, in order to marginalize the CIA, was about the best Bush could do under the circumstances.)
Cousin Dave at February 19, 2012 12:30 PM
Leave a comment