Reply #2: Prior to Transportation Security Administration they were contract guards. [View All]

[Free the Press]

Only after the Congress created the Transportation Security Administration did these security guards become federal employees.

Prior to that, they were paid slave wages by private contract security companies.

Therefore the money allocated for hiring them was strictly payola to * cronies who brought in a bunch of nitwits and Dell PC's and used good old boy networking to staff the newly created supervisory jobs and mangerial jobs.*

The agency was top heavy from the start, in terms of where the money was going - lots of military men got high paying jobs at the top levels of this agency.*

Despite these temporary additions,* the overall number of full-time employees of the federal government is down substantially.

These employees will soon be private contract security guards again.

Some airports have already received exemptions from the TSA that allow these workers to become contract security guards again.

When the TSA was created, it was widely expected to become a temporary agency, and thus it required Congressional renewal.

Though this agency was moved from the Department of Transportation to the Department of Homeland Security, its remains a temporary agency.

Republicans are very opposed to creation of federal jobs.

These jobs were only reluctantly agreed to by them, when the Congress legislated an expiration date for the agency.

http://www.tsa.gov/public/display?theme=7

*edited for one more comment and a typo.