Hearing of the Transportation Security Subcommittee of the House Homeland Security Committee - TSA's Efforts to Advance Risk-Based Security: Stakeholder Perspectives

Hearing

TSA's Risk-Based Security has many stakeholders all with a vested interest in seeing continued security and efficiency successes. These include domestic and international airlines, airports, flight crew personnel, passengers, state and local governments, freight forwarders, manufacturers, and others. The purpose of this committee is to provide an open process for these voices and many more.

Stakeholders across the board have been very vocal about the changes that TSA is making to its operations, and today's hearing represents just one of many opportunities to examine these alterations. While today's timeframe does not allow for every group to be represented on the panel, we have invited several to submit a written statement for the record.

We all may not agree on the decisions that should be made, but I hope we can all agree that these are incredibly important discussions and debates we've been engaged in. Moving forward I hope that we will continue to work together in order to better understand how we can improve passenger safety, ease of travel, and ultimately implement leaner more effective policies throughout the system.

One of the key ways to accomplish this is to work directly with TSA to ensure that expectations are met and standards assured. However, for this to occur TSA must become more transparent and communicate more effectively. This will allow travelers and all stakeholders to gain a greater understanding of why they are being subjected to one type of screening versus alternate methods.

Carie Lemack, whose mother, Judy Larocque, died on American Airlines Flight 11 on September 11th, made a critical point in a recent op-ed. She said: "When travelers are aware that the threat is real, they are the largest and likely most effective group of behavior detection officers we could hope for. But right now they are not aware."

TSA's failure to work with all stakeholders and effectively message new policies has
consistently led to pushback. This particular snag is where TSA has repeatedly demonstrated a lackluster performance.

At this time, I would like to submit Ms. Lemack's op-ed, as well as a written statement from Ms. Lemack, for the hearing record. Without objection, so, ordered.

Every day, TSA's operations impact millions of travelers directly through their screening
operations, but there are millions more Americans whose taxes help fund TSA, even if they have never stepped foot in an airport. As an advocate for my Congressional District, I represent 750,000 potential fliers and Charlotte Douglas, right outside of my district, saw over 41 million travelers in 2012. Helping to facilitate this travel in a safer, easier way benefits everyone. Whether it is a business transporting freight, families taking a vacation, a salesman traveling for work, or grandma trying to visit for the holidays, beyond the dollars and cents there is a human element to RBS.

With that in mind, I'll make specific points, and I look forward to discussing these and other issues in greater detail today:

1. RBS is in desperate need of private sector ingenuity. Take Pre-Check, for example: the Administrator's goal is to have 1 in 4 travelers go through some form of expedited screening by the end of the year. While this is certainly a worthy goal, the federal government simply cannot do it alone.

Marketing the program to travelers, streamlining agency-wide operations, and simplifying the screening experience, will take private sector innovation. TSA must be a willing partner in order to reach this goal.

2. These programs allow our screeners to be more efficient. Spending less energy on those that are low risk means that screeners are able to spend more time looking for those items that present the greatest threats to passengers and crewmembers. RBS allows us to prioritize in a manner that better ensures security while easing the burden on travelers, businesses, and screeners.

3. We must find a way to conduct screening at a lower cost. Risk-based security is not only about targeting resources towards the threats; it's also about reducing wasteful spending on screening low-risk people and goods. We must look for efficiencies in the current system and while many have been proposed by experts at the GAO and other groups, and through programs such as the SPP (Screening Partnership Program), there remain several recommendations that deserve to be fully evaluated.

The bottom line is TSA must do a better job of generating tangible cost savings from RBS.

Yesterday, Congress received the President's FY 2014 Budget, which included $7.4 Billion for TSA. While I'm pleased to see that there is a slight reduction from current funding levels given our fiscal situation, as well as a strong emphasis on RBS in the budget, I'm disappointed that TSA was unable to find more significant cost savings overall.

I believe RBS is an excellent opportunity for finding efficiencies and saving tax dollars. I intend to press TSA on that issue, and look forward to our witnesses' testimony and perspectives on that as well.

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