My cousin Maria took a 5 a.m. flight out of San Antonio International two weeks ago. She arrived at 4:45 a.m., which used to be cutting it close. She made it through security with six minutes to spare — and that was considered a win. The agent at the checkpoint told her to count herself lucky. Airports from Houston to Miami had already been telling travelers to arrive four hours early. Four hours. For a domestic flight.
That's not a travel advisory. That's an admission that the federal government has broken something fundamental and expects you to absorb the cost.
Four Hours Is a Policy Failure, Not a Travel Tip
The Department of Homeland Security's budget impasse forced TSA to operate with skeleton crews at major hubs, creating wait times stretching past three hours at airports including O'Hare, LAX, and Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson — the busiest passenger airport in the world. Airlines including Southwest and American issued formal advisories warning passengers to build in extra time. Some airports reported checkpoint backlogs exceeding 2,000 passengers simultaneously. These aren't abstractions. These are real people missing real flights.
TSA employs roughly 55,000 screeners nationwide. When DHS funding becomes a political football and Congress decides to play games with a continuing resolution, those agents get squeezed — sick days don't get covered, overtime disappears, and lines explode. TSA Administrator David Pekoske warned Congress in February that staffing shortfalls would have "direct and immediate impact on passenger throughput." Congress did what Congress does. Nothing.
And now you're the one getting to the airport at 4 in the morning.
Who Gets Hurt When DHS Can't Keep the Lights On
When's the last time a congressman had to sprint through O'Hare in dress shoes because TSA was running on fumes? They don't stand in these lines. The people most harmed by this aren't the business-class travelers with lounge access and TSA PreCheck. They've got a separate line. They'll be fine.
The people standing in a four-hour line are the working family flying to see a sick relative in Phoenix. The small business owner heading to a client meeting in Dallas. The young couple who saved up for their first trip to Orlando. In 2025, Americans took approximately 900 million domestic airline trips, with TSA processing roughly 2.7 million passengers per day at peak. When the system degrades even 20 percent, that ripples into missed flights, rebooking fees, lost hotel nights, and shattered plans. Delta reported a 14 percent spike in connection-miss complaints during the worst weeks of the delays.
Washington made this mess. The working class is cleaning it up.
The Immigration Connection Nobody's Talking About
While TSA was stretched thin on the security side, the same DHS that runs airport screening also processes asylum claims, manages border operations, and coordinates with CBP at ports of entry. All of that runs on the same budget that just got squeezed.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem stated publicly that the department's priorities had to be ruthlessly triaged during the funding lapse. "We were forced to make impossible choices," she said. The impossible choice turned out to be: secure the border comprehensively or keep airport checkpoints adequately staffed. Pick one. You can't do both on a depleted budget.
A department that can't simultaneously screen travelers and process immigration cases isn't a properly funded department. It's an underfunded one being asked to do more than it was built for. The Left loves to expand DHS mandates. The Left hates to fund them. That contradiction has a price, and you paid it at Terminal B.
This Didn't Have to Happen — And Can't Happen Again
Continuing resolutions are a symptom of a broken appropriations process. Congress hasn't passed all twelve required appropriations bills on time in a single fiscal year since 1997. Not once in twenty-eight years. Instead, agencies limp from CR to CR, unable to plan, hire, or spend on capital improvements. TSA can't modernize equipment. It can't staff up for known travel surges. It runs perpetually lean because Congress prefers fiscal theater to actual governance.
Pre-check privatization has been floated for years. Countries like Canada and Israel use hybrid security models where private contractors operate under government oversight. The TSA model — fully federalized since 2002 — was a post-9/11 overcorrection that has never been seriously revisited. Senator Rand Paul introduced legislation in 2023 to let airports opt into private screening programs under federal oversight. It never moved. The same establishment that manages the current disaster killed the reform that might have prevented it.
Maria made her flight. Barely. The airline lost her bag somewhere between San Antonio and Charlotte. She called me from baggage claim, laughing, because what else do you do. But not everyone can laugh it off. Some people missed weddings. Some missed funerals. Washington won't lose a night's sleep over it. That's the real scandal — not the lines, but the indifference behind them.
