Allow additional time
On Bill Clinton's promises, unscreened crowds, and unfathomable security lines at Atlanta's airport
Travelers at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson have reported unfathomable delays at the TSA security checkpoints, with WSB-TV reporting 5-hour waits and the airport itself officially advising, “Due to current federal conditions, passengers are advised to allow at least 3 hours or more for domestic and 4 or hours or more for international screenings. Allow additional time for checked baggage.”
■ What “current federal conditions” really means: TSA agents aren’t receiving paychecks, and at least a third of the agents at Atlanta have called in sick. A last-minute, ad-hoc plan to send ICE agents to the airports to supplement the TSA is supposedly to take effect with the start of the work week.
■ As a matter of principle, citizen encounters with government should be safe, respectful, and as unobtrusive as possible. Delays of five or six hours fail miserably on the yardstick of “unobtrusive”. Moreover, they’re hardly respectful of citizens’ time, and they’re really not safe, either, since they create enormous crowds of people gathered prior to security screening.
■ More than 20 years ago, then-President Bill Clinton made a big display of “Government that Works Better for Less”. It was a popular promise that even predated the assembly of the Department of Homeland Security, the funding of which is the ultimate source of the airport security delays today. Yet we seem farther away right now from that promise of efficient, effective government services than we did in the Clinton era. Surely the buck must stop on someone’s desk somewhere.
