TSA Got Everything It Wanted For Christmas

OverTheGeicoE writes "It looks like Congress' recent jabs at TSA were just posturing after all. Last Friday, President Obama signed a spending act passed by both houses of Congress. The act gives TSA a $7.85 billion budget increase for 2012 and includes funding for 12 additional multi-modal Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) teams and 140 new behavior detection officers. It even includes funding for 250 shiny new body scanners, which was originally cut from the funding bill last May."

Comments

What is there to gain.

[Cstryon]

Here we are owing all sorts of money, and now we are giving a whole lot of money that doesn't exist, to a program that has yielded no worth? What's to gain? I've heard all of the bad news about TSA, and all the molesting, and violations that they commit, with no reprocutions. But please, someone explain to me what is it that the Government really benefits from this.

Perhaps a bad comparison, I support owning a firearm. I have family and friends who have use their guns in defense, so I see some benefit, among all the risks. But I do not own a gun, or have one in my home. Why? Because I have never been in a situation that I required a gun.
This is like posting armed guards in my upper middle class neighborhood home!

What's the deal with VIPR?

[steveha]

I'm not thrilled with the security checkpoints at airports, but I do understand that an airplane can be turned into a giant guided missile that can take down a skyscraper. It may be that extreme measures are appropriate for security at an airport.

But how does it make sense to send a VIPR team to search people getting on or off a train? How do you justify that? Are they going to drive the train off the tracks and blow up a building?

"Oh maybe someone has a bomb in his luggage." How often do trains get blown up in America? What are the odds here? And even if the security becomes 100% effective on trains, what about bombs set on the train tracks? Searching train luggage seems completely futile to me.

Has a VIPR team ever caught a terrorist or found a bomb, ever?

Remember, we send people to prison for not paying taxes, or maybe take their homes away. Should we really be using tax dollars for VIPR teams?

steveha

Re:Meet the new boss

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm 49. Sometimes that feels really old, sometimes not. But I absolutely concur with theVP that America now is almost unrecognizable, politically and culturally, from the America when I was a kid.

I'm sure people my age from every previous generation said the same thing. Something tells me that most of them said it with pride, not sadness, anger, and frustration.

Re:Who would have stopped this?

[rock_climbing_guy]

You are most definitely correct that the President cannot reduce funding by fiat. It does say here that the President gave his assent to a spending bill that appropriated this money to the TSA.

The President does wield considerable power over the legislatiave process by virtue of his possession of the power of veto. I believe that even though a new President wouldn't be able to change everything right away, he could put considerable pressure on Congress to move in a certain direction by using the veto and the bully pulpit. Consider that if it became apparent that Americans have chosen a new direction by electing, say, Ron Paul, Congress-critters would receive a clear message that if they did not co-operate with the new President, they might be replaced with someone who will.

Re:Well,

[waveclaw]

$7.8 billion

Think of the science NASA could do with that cash being wasted to frisk old people for their pill bottles!

Or, if you're one of the NASA haters, think of all the children who won't get an adequate education/vacination/lunch/foodstamps for that money.

But damn tootin' if one of them grandmas thinks she can pass off a bottle of Midol, our Skies Are Safe(tm)*

* (For values of safe equal to We Covered Our Butts come election time. Deal not available in major markets, near large cities or in New York state. Remember: you only need to give up a little freedom or the terrorists win. Vote TSA again, next election.)