Senators are expected to vote Thursday on a Republican proposal that would fund the Transportation Security Administration and much of the Department of Homeland Security, but it's expected to fail because Democrats want to tie the DHS funding to their demands to restrict how far ICE goes in its efforts to round up illegal aliens.
With Congress set to leave town by week's end for its own spring break recess, calls are intensifying for an end to the 41-day stalemate that's put the livelihoods of TSA officers at risk as they provide airport security without pay.
“This is a dire situation,” the acting TSA administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill testified at a House hearing Wednesday.
She described the multiple hardships facing unpaid TSA workers — piling up bills and eviction notices, even plasma donations to make ends meet — and warned of potential airport closures if more employees refuse to come to work. Daily callout rates have increased to 11% nationwide.
“At this point, we have to look at all options on the table," she said. "And that does require us to, at some point, make very difficult choices as to which airports we might try to keep open and which ones we might have to shut down as our callout rates increase.”
