The Senate passed a bill to end lawmakers’ special privileges to bypass airport security lines late Thursday night while security personnel continue to manage hours-long lines while working without pay through a partial government shutdown.
The End Special Treatment for Congress at Airports Act was introduced by Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn and approved by unanimous consent because no senators were present on the floor to object to the legislation. The bill passed as the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) shutdown prepared to enter its 35th day — tied for the second-longest in American history — with Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers struggling to manage a surge in spring break travelers.
“Maybe, just maybe, if Congress has to live under the same laws that everybody else does, it will motivate us to get our work done. In other words to fund the [DHS],” Cornyn said on the Senate floor Thursday night. “So no American, no air traveler will have to suffer the disruption and tribulations that many, many travelers are having to experience now. It’s not too much to expect that Congress will be subject to the rules as everybody else.”
Cornyn’s bill will force all members of Congress to follow the same TSA screening procedures as the general public and bars the use of federal funds to allow them to soar past security lines. Lawmakers can still participate in TSA PreCheck.
Cornyn’s office did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
The legislation now awaits passage in the House, and then would go to President Donald Trump’s desk for signature. The TSA is an agency of the DHS.
Calls to restrict lawmakers from getting preferential treatment have been picking up steam in Congress, and videos on social media showing Republican South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace and Democratic Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz sailing past long TSA lines yesterday sparked outrage online.
The roughly 50,000 TSA agents were last paid a partial paycheck Feb. 28 and have been working without pay since. More workers continue to call out sick as they once again go through a shutdown revoking their pay.
The last government shutdown, which lasted 43 days and began in October, ended before the Thanksgiving travel season, but the DHS shutdown is facing the height of spring break travel and security lines are stretching outside of airports and into parking lots.
Air travel worker unions, airlines have called on Congress to resolve differences and restore funding as stress mounts on workers, and TSA specifically called on Democrats to stop withholding their votes to end the shutdown.
“The shutdown is having very real consequences, and hardworking federal aviation workers, the airline industry and our passengers are being used as a political football once again. This is simply unacceptable and un-American,” Airlines for America president and CEO Chris Sununu, a former Republican governor of New Hampshire, said in a statement.
Cornyn is currently locked in an extremely expensive runoff primary contest against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton that President Donald Trump and Cornyn’s Senate counterpart, Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, have chosen to stay out of. Trump said he will make an endorsement soon, and Paxton said he will drop out of the race if the Senate passes the SAVE America Act. Soon after, Cornyn advocated to eliminate the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold despite defending the protective measure in 2022.
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