Paying Our Great Transportation Security Administration Officers and Employees

Key Points

• Trump is ordering emergency pay for roughly 60,000 TSA employees, including about 50,000 security officers at airports nationwide, who have been working without pay during a six-week DHS shutdown.
• The memorandum directs the Secretary of Homeland Security and the OMB Director to use existing funds with a connection to TSA operations to cover worker pay and benefits that have gone unpaid during the shutdown.
• The shutdown has caused nearly 500 TSA officers to leave their jobs and thousands more to call out sick, leading to security wait times of three hours or more at some airports and raising concerns about travel safety.
• Once normal DHS funding is restored by Congress, the government plans to rebalance its accounts so that all department operations can continue as originally planned before the funding lapse.

News