For weeks now, frustrated travelers trying to catch flights all over the United States have been caught in hours-long security-check lines as overwhelmed Transportation Security Administration agents were forced to work without pay.

It’s not the first time that federal funding for TSA — a highly visible service that impacts millions of Americans daily — has been caught up in a political brawl in Congress, this time over immigration enforcement.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

In fact, it never should have happened, not even once.

That’s because taxpayers and travelers already pay for transportation security, not through their taxes but through their plane tickets.

The federally mandated Passenger Security Fee, first levied after the 9/11 terrorist attacks to help fund TSA screening activities, has more than doubled since its inception.

Today, it adds an $11.20 charge to every round-trip ticket purchase — more than $4.5 billion in 2025 alone.

The fee is one of multiple government-mandated add-on charges, including a ticket excise tax, flight segment fees and passenger facility charges, that add taxes of 15% to 30% on every airline ticket you buy.

And while the lion’s share of Passenger Security Fee revenue was supposed to stay with TSA, Congress has chosen to divert much of it to feed an already fattened hyena.

Bipartisan Budget Acts passed in 2013 and 2018 funneled huge chunks of Passenger Security Fee proceeds away from TSA and into the Treasury’s general fund, where it can be spent in any way government officials want.

Congress deceptively portrayed that decision as a matter of “deficit reduction,” but we can see how well that’s worked.

If these resources had remained with TSA where they belonged, the agency could have built up an emergency fund to help tide these essential workers over during government shutdowns.

Or maybe the cash could have enabled technology investments to speed passengers through checkpoints all year round.

Airlines would be on solid moral, if not legal, ground to pull out of this charade and simply stop collecting the Passenger Security Fee.

They are not responsible for this mess: The blame belongs at the big, bloated feet of our federal government.

To do right by taxpayers, who are now literally paying $11.20 apiece to wait in line, Congress and President Donald Trump have four choices.

First, they can stop squandering Passenger Security Fee revenues on unrelated federal programs.

This means repealing the provisions from the 2013 and 2018 laws that allow these shenanigans, requiring the funds to be directly spent on TSA operations and investments and capping the fee so taxpaying travelers aren’t gouged for government services.

The only permissible diversion of any collections should be a small share for TSA’s Inspector General, which should oversee fee collections and ensure TSA uses the funding properly.

Another option is to turn over passenger security to airports and other private entities.

Private security contracts, overseen by government regulators, are commonplace in many countries — and are already used at some US airports.

TSA has frequently embarrassed itself with security lapses, poor equipment choices and the padded personnel budgets that often accompany slapdash federal agency expansions.

Alternatively, Congress could repeal the Passenger Security Fee entirely and fund the forward-facing portion of TSA’s responsibilities only through general revenues.

That would at least give taxpaying travelers a break on ticket prices.

One final option: Congress could fulfill its 2013 and 2018 claims.

Change the name to the “Special Deficit Reduction Fee” and require the revenue to go directly to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, to trim down the $39 trillion in borrowing our government has foisted on future generations of taxpayers.

It’s not particularly fair or logical to have air travelers help clean up Washington’s profligate spending habits — but at least it would be more honest than picking their pockets for something that doesn’t shorten airport security lines.

In fact, both the president’s Fiscal Year 2026 budget and bipartisan legislation in Congress called the SAFEGUARDS Act already propose to end the underhanded Passenger Security Fee diversion.

This is no longer about ICE enforcement, or immigration policy in general, or the separation of powers — it’s about our money.

Get to work, Washington.

Pete Sepp is president of National Taxpayers Union.

The federal Liberals accepted a Conservative proposal Monday to put guardrails around proposed new cabinet powers as they debated the government’s omnibus budget bill.

The Liberal government’s budget implementation legislation, Bill C-15, proposes to give federal ministers the ability to temporarily exempt individuals or corporations from some non-criminal federal laws — an approach the government refers to as “regulatory sandboxes.”

Some members of Parliament have expressed discomfort with the idea of granting such sweeping powers to cabinet in the interest of boosting competitive or economic forces.

Both interim NDP leader Don Davies and Green Leader Elizabeth May appeared at Monday’s finance committee meeting, where MPs were going clause by clause through the legislation.

Davies said such a ministerial override would present a “serious threat to Canada’s democratic foundations.”

“Shame on you,” May said after committee members did not adopt her own amendment to restrict the application of regulatory sandboxes.

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Conservative MP and committee member Sandra Cobena said she was concerned about the “immense concentration of power” implied in the proposal. She introduced amendments that she said would “meet the urgency of the moment” while balancing democratic standards.

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The successful amendments, backed by Liberal members of the committee, included a requirement for ministers to consult with Canadians before ordering any legal exemptions, and to report back to Parliament.

Cobena’s amendments would also require the approval of both a cabinet minister and the president of the Treasury Board before an individual or corporation is shielded from a law. They also would clearly state that certain laws — including the Conflict of Interest Act and the Access to Information Act — cannot be overridden

“The government has heard opposition concerns … and we are willing to support the guardrails suggested by these CPC amendments,” said Liberal MP and committee member Carlos Leitao.

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MPs still had hundreds of clauses ahead of them before they broke for question period Monday afternoon.

The finance committee is on a tight timeline with the omnibus budget bill. Members of the finance committee were scheduled to meet for up to 12 hours in Ottawa on Monday to go clause by clause through Bill C-15.

Liberal MP Karina Gould, the committee chair, said she booked the lengthy meeting so House of Commons resources would be available to MPs late into the evening as they tackle more than 600 clauses in the bill.

MPs agreed earlier this month to a motion seeking to fast-track the bill through the committee and report stages of debate.

That motion said Bill C-15 must be considered at finance committee by Monday, which must report back to the House by Wednesday. It’s not yet clear when the final vote on the bill will take place.

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