Rep. Mica: TSA Inflated Cost of Private Screeners

The Transportation Security Administration cooked the books to make private security screeners look more expensive than federal employees, the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee charged.
Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., said the TSA inflated the costs to keep federal screeners on the payroll, The Washington Post reports.

The TSA estimated that using private screeners cost 17 percent more than those employed by the government. However, the Government Accountability Office issued a report that the TSA has now revised those figures to show that private screeners only cost three percent more.

“It’s obvious they tried to cook the books to make it look like the private screening under federal supervision was more expensive,” Mica told the Post. Currently, TSA oversees private security screeners at 16 airports but the head of the TSA, John Pistole, suspended the program in January.

Mica said the TSA was “never intended to grow” to be an employer with more than 40,000 screeners and thousands of administrators. He added that GAO studies have shown that private screeners outperform federal screeners, the Post said.