Houston Airport Forced To Close TSA Checkpoint Due To Shutdown

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Huffington Post

01/14/2019 01:04 am ET

TSA agents have been among the federal employees forced to work without pay during the shutdown.
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By Nick Visser

The George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston was forced to close one of its security screening checkpoints on Sunday because of the partial government shutdown, which has caused a shortage of workers.

The airport sent out a message on Twitter saying the Transportation and Security Administration checkpoint for Terminal B would be closed and passengers would be rerouted to other terminals.

TSA agents have been among the federal employees forced to work without pay during the government shutdown, which became the longest in American history this weekend. Many of the TSA’s workers have called in sick rather than go to work, although the agency said the effectiveness of its security screenings would not be compromised during the shutdown.

Around 800,000 federal workers missed their first paychecks on Friday, although Congress passed a bill last week to grant back pay to those workers and the president has signaled that he will sign it.

Read more: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tsa-houston-bush-shutdown_us_5c3c2096e4b0922a21d62bb5

[Gothmog]

1. This is not good news

[rpannier]

2. That's unpossible

The douche administration told us they were not calling in sick or anything like that

[Grokenstein]

3. Unconceivable!

They're all very very very VERY happy to work without pay! In fact, they told theDotard that they'll continue working without pay even after the shutdown ends, just to express their love for their perfect leader!!

This has to be the devious work of Fake Media, SOROS!! and Russian Puppet Pelosi!

[lostnfound]

4. Personal experience Saturday, I suspect the customs and immigration stats are lies too (Chicago)

Walked past an “Armageddon line”, of people waiting to get passports checked. The line of them stretched as far as I could see, four or five people wide, and I walked and walked past them with my “Global Entry” card. Still took me 40 minutes to get through. I estimated the regular line was 4 hours. A fellow traveler with same experience independently estimated that the regular line was 4 hours, before I even gave my number.

Official website claims maximum line was 165 minutes for nonresidents, but they weren’t separated for most of that, and the maximum supposedly happened a couple hours prior to our arrival. So I think the stats are being skewed. The line was almost backed up to the end of the moving sidewalks of terminal 5.

[llmart]

5. Since a recent poll showed that only 18% of Americans say they've been personally affected by this..

maybe this is what it will take for more than 18% of the people to get hopping mad about the shutdown. Air travel affects a massive amount of people. Most people in this country don't care unless it affects them personally. Maybe other federal workers should take a page from the TSA playbook and call in sick so that it affects more people. Solidarity works.

[EarthFirst]

6. +1

If even 1/4 of the ~800,000 federal workers began calling out sick; it wouldn’t take long to send ripples across the system.

[IronLionZion]

7. Never elect a president who is comfortable with not paying workers

and leaves America vulnerable because his party's loyalties are elsewhere