Markets 
Some airports around the country were getting back to normal Saturday after President Trump issued an order to pay beleaguered TSA agents with existing homeland funds.
The reprieve followed weeks of chaos at the nation’s airports, and came as Congress dropped the ball once again, with lawmakers skipping town for a two-week break after the House and Senate failed to reach an agreement to fund the Homeland Security Department.
The improvements came after President Trump ordered ICE agents to assist in airport security as TSA agents went weeks without pay amid an ongoing Congressional funding battle.
“The airport I went through yesterday, the line’s already decreased. They’re not where they need to be, but the plan’s in place,” White House border czar Tom Homan told Fox News Saturday. More ICE agents were expected to complete training and be on the job soon, he added.
TSA wait times at New York airports were back to normal Saturday. The published wait at LaGuardia’s Terminal B was just four minutes.
It wasn’t smooth sailing everywhere.
At Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, flyers were still being encouraged to show up four hours ahead of their flight times.
At Baltimore’s Thurgood Marshall International Airport, people were waiting up to three hours to check their bags – and another 21/2 to 3 hours to get through security, WBAL TV reported.
TSA struggled with its longest wait times in history last week, Deputy Administrator Ha Nguyen McNeill told Congress Wednesday. The mayhem came just before a spike in spring break travel.
“America’s air travel system has reached its breaking point,” the president said while signing an order Friday to pay TSA agents. “I have determined that these circumstances constitute an emergency situation compromising the Nation’s security.”
Trump’s new Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said TSA workers “should begin seeing paychecks as early as Monday.”
Trump’s move made it likely that TSA agents – who had been quitting and missing work in substantial numbers while not being paid during the shutdown that began Feb. 14 – would be back on the job.
The Senate reached an agreement early Friday to pass funding for most of the Homeland Security Department, while leaving out ICE funding.
Lawmakers planned to then take care of Immigration, Customs and Enforcement down the road in a reconciliation” bill they could pass with only Republican votes.
But House members balked, instead passing their own version of stop gap funding for the whole Homeland Security Department, which Senate Democrats have so far refused to support.
Having failed to work out a deal among themselves, lawmakers skipped town for a two-week recess that extends through the Easter and Passover holidays.
“It’s an absolute failure that they’re not going to paid, that it needs that kind of intervention,” Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) told Fox. He said TSA agents tell him they’re exausted, frustrated, and “broke.”
Read the full article here
