House lawmakers on Wednesday questioned how to modernize airport screening under a plan pushed by the Trump administration to hand parts of Transportation Security Administration work to private contractors at smaller airports. The House Committee on Homeland Security held the hearing nearly 25 years after the TSA was created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, but members repeatedly returned to issues of pay during government shutdowns and to what they said would be the consequences of moving security screening into the private sector.
Committee chairman Rep. Andrew Garbarino, a New York Republican, opened by focusing on how TSA officers were affected by lapses in funding. He said TSA officers experienced “a total of 119 days impacted by shutdown conditions” between the 2025 and 2026 shutdowns, and he said that translated to roughly 40% of the fiscal year spent working “without a paycheck” while carrying out a federal security mission.
Several members said Congress has not passed pending measures that would guarantee pay for TSA workers during shutdowns. Rep. Lou Correa, a California Democrat, argued that lawmakers themselves should not go unpaid if TSA officers do not receive pay in the same scenario.
Correa also criticized the administration’s budget proposal. He said the plan would include $477.3 million to move airport screening responsibilities for about 250 smaller airports to private companies, and he said it would cut “more than 4,500 TSA positions” to save $529.3 million in compensation and benefits. He added that the TSA this week authorized contractors in its airport staffing program to acquire and maintain screening equipment that had previously been “strictly a government function,” according to the hearing record.
Correa said technology alone would not solve the workforce problem. He told the committee: “Technology alone can’t replace the experienced people who make the security checkpoints work as they have for the past 25 years,” adding that the policy amounted to “pushing an antigovernment privatization ideology.”
The hearing also weighed what role airports should have in choosing private screening participation. About 20 U.S. airports already staff their checkpoints through the Screening Partnership Program, where airports currently can opt in. Under the administration’s proposed budget, members said smaller airports would be required to participate, including airports designated for passenger service of 10–30 seats and those that accommodate charter flights and private planes without fixed schedules.
TSA privatization and staffing were addressed by a panel of witnesses from industry, airports, and labor. Christopher Sununu, president and CEO of the airline trade group Airlines for America, told lawmakers that the industry wants airports to retain a choice about whether to use private screeners. “Ensuring SPP remains an option for airports and does not become a mandatory program is paramount to the U.S. aviation industry,” Sununu said, according to the hearing.
Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents TSA workers, took a different stance on the administration’s direction. He said he was opposed to privatizing airport security, telling the committee: “I’m totally against the privatization of any airport,” adding, “You don’t contract out the CIA, do you?”
Airport leadership and the industry view also factored into the committee discussion. Dallas Fort Worth International Airport CEO Chris McLaughlin testified as well, and the hearing panel included additional committee questioning after both union and industry witnesses described how screening should be run.
In the middle of the debate, Garbarino and other members pushed back against the idea that the issue maps neatly onto party lines. Garbarino, in an interruption, pointed to cities that he said use private screeners at their airports, mentioning “the very conservative cities of San Francisco, Seattle and Atlanta,” and saying that “so yeah, maybe it’s not a Republican thing.”
Alongside the discussion of screening operations, Garbarino and Rep. Tim Kennedy introduced legislation aimed at funding screening technology and reimbursing airports for security capital costs. Garbarino and Kennedy, along with three other committee members, proposed doubling the amount that TSA administrators must set aside to reimburse airports for capital costs tied to security, raising the requirement from $250 million to $500 million. Their bill also would establish an annual TSA fund of $250 million for airport screening technology.
Committee members said revenue for both proposals would come from a $5.60 fee paid by airline customers for each one-way trip on U.S. flights. They said the 9/11 Passenger Security Fee has been in place since 2002 and that, starting in 2013, Congress required that some portion of the revenue be used to reduce the federal deficit. Since then, the bill’s co-sponsors told the committee, an estimated $15 billion went to the Treasury for that purpose.
Garbarino said the passenger security fee revenue has not been used as originally intended. “Americans and Congress expected this fee to directly fund our aviation security system, but that is not the case. Nearly half the fee’s revenue goes to something else,” he said, adding: “Congress must restore the passenger security fee to its original intent, to fund the next generation of screening technology that protects our people in the skies.”
At the same time, members said the administration’s fiscal 2027 budget proposal would end the practice of diverting passenger fees and would instead fund the TSA partly with $1.68 billion expected to go to deficit reduction. The committee hearing left lawmakers to decide whether ensuring pay during shutdowns and keeping screening work accountable to the public sector should accompany any broader modernization effort.