Air travel is now worse than ever because of this ridiculous partial government shutdown affecting the Department of Homeland Security – the operative aspect of which is that the Transportation Security Administration, the agency founded principally to secure air travel following the hijackings of jetliners on September 11, 2001, cannot pay its workers thanks to Congress’ inability to pass an appropriation for the agency.

Simply put, the Democrats refuse to fund TSA. And because they refuse to fund it, TSA agents are quitting and not showing up for work, because they’re being paid in IOU’s from the government. They’ve been designated as essential, so they aren’t being furloughed, but a month into this partial shutdown it doesn’t matter. People don’t work when they don’t get paid.

So you have this…

President Trump sent ICE agents to the airports, which doesn’t fix the screening issues, but it does scare illegal aliens away from the airport and so there are somewhat fewer people flying.

But this isn’t how to fix this problem. I’ll tell you how to fix it.

First, the public hates TSA.

TSA was founded to deal with a problem which has already gone obsolete. You can’t hijack a plane anymore, because the minute you do, everybody on the plane will think it’s another 9/11 and they will beat you to death, or damn close to it, before you can get inside the cockpit.

TSA is Security Theater. Everybody knows that, everybody understands that. TSA is a unionized government bureaucracy that feels up your private parts and demands that you take off your shoes and belt to get on an airplane. TSA is one reason everybody now dresses like a slob at the airport.

Everything about TSA sucks, and now it’s a 2 or 3 hour wait to get through their stupid, needless security gate because there aren’t enough TSA workers willing to labor for an IOU from the government. Which is very understandable.

But be that as it may, the Democrats refuse to fund TSA.

So the answer is simple.

Disband TSA and go back to the way we used to do airport security. Or let the airports come up with their own way of doing it.

Nobody will notice a difference, other than that the experience of flying will likely become enjoyable again. There was a time, though it makes me old to say this, when we used to actually look forward to the experience of getting on a plane and going somewhere. Now it’s a damned chore, and it’s because of the government.

Now is the perfect opportunity to fix that. And the fix is colossally easy.