T topic of political groups. The pentagon said that progress is being made by libya in driving isis from the oilrich country. Watch live coverage at 2 p. M. Eastern, also on cspan 3. After the surrender, the United States faced more than ten years of challenges during reconstruction. And policies instituted at that time had a Lasting Impact on American History. This saturday, starting at 1 00 p. M. Eastern, American History tv is live from Gettysburg College from gettysburg, pennsylvania, and the authors and historians addressed issues such as freedom with abigail cooper, reconstruction in the north, with the associate professor of history, and the post civil war career with the professor of history. Also hear about the confederate and the origins of lost cause, the annual summer Conference Live all day saturday beginning at 1 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan 3s American History tv. For the complete American History tv weekend schedule go to cspan. Org. We are going public. Well be watched by our friends and by people across the country. And i would hope as i said before the senate may change, not as an institution, but may become a more efficient body because of televised proceedings. The proceedings of the United States senate are being broadcast to the nation on television for the first time. Not that we have operated in secret until now. Millions of americans have sat in the galleries and observed Senate Debates during their visits to washington. But today they can witness the proceedings in their own homes. And in effect, the senate floor has been a kind of a stage. The senators have been acting on that stage. The audience is in the galleries. And by our action today we havent really fundamentally altered that situation. Weve simply enlarged the galleries and pushed out the walls to include all the American People who wish to watch. Commemorating 30 years. Congress has approved a 28 million of a shift in funding from the tsa to try to alleviate long security lines. Next, the head of the Transportation Security AdministrationPeter Neffenger takes questions, senator ron johnson chairs the Senate Homeland security committee. Good morning, this hearing will come to order. I apologize for my tardiness, what should have taken ten minutes took an hour. But i want to welcome the witnesses, try and catch my breath. Appreciate your testimony. Obviously theres a fair amount of interest in this hearing. I think at the heart of what is currently ailing the tsa is the fact that we really have two completely contradictory goals. On the other hand we want efficient throughput so we can get passengers to their flights on time, and at the same time we need 100 security. All of this is being driven we have to understand the root cause of the problem here is islamic terrorists. Since the inception of the tsa we have spent about 95 billion just on tsa alone. The cost of islamic terror to the world, to the civilized world, is enormous. So if you really want to talk about addressing the root cause of the problem is we have got to defeat islamic terrorists. Where they reside. But again, you know, i appreciate all the witnesses testimony. The fact that we consciously made a decision to decrease the number of tsa workers obviously didnt work out very well. I appreciate the fact that were beefing up training, unity effort. I mean, all these things are positive signs. I appreciate fact that mr. Neffenger you are working with the Inspector Generals Office and gao, it comes through clear on testimony. I apologize for being late. Do ask unanimous consent that my opening remarks, my written Opening Statement be included in the record and with that i will turn it over to senator carper and i will catch my breath. Mr. Chairman, were glad youre here. I had a couple of trains that were shot out under me coming down from delaware. I know the feeling. Thank you for joining us this morning. This is going to be a good hearing. This is going to be a real good hearing, its a timely hearing. As we all know the Transportation Security Administration was created in the wake of the attacks on september 11th and we understand while the terrorist threats to our Aviation System that the agency was created to combat. Having said that, though, we oftentimes fail to acknowledge an undeniable tension that exists alluded to by the chairman, an undeniable tension that exists at the core of tsas mission. On the one hand we ask tsa to screen literally millions of passengers and their luggage carefully every day to prevent explosives, weapons and other Dangerous Items from finding a way on board our aircraft. On the other hand millions of passengers, weve been among them, weve all been there, want to get on board our airplanes on time and without the aggravation that security screening can oftentimes bring. Given the long wait times weve recently witnessed at Security Check points at a number of airports across america we know that it can be difficult to strike the right balance between security and convenience. Some might even be tempted to say that we cant have both. That Effective Security measures invariably bring with them inconvenience, lines and even missed flights. I disagree. In fact, i believe that many of the problems weve witnessed at some of our airports are imminently solvable but first we need to better understand the scope of the challenge and its genesis. After the department of Homeland Securitys office of Inspector General produced a troubling report last year revealing vulnerabilities at tsa check points admiral neffenger took several steps to tighten security. While the steps that he and his team have taken have contributed to longer waits for some, there are other reasons why tsa has struggled lately. I want to talk about a couple of them. Resource constraints and increased air travel have plays a significant role. Tsa is being asked literally to do more with less. While inept management and leadership at some airports have been a major factor the truth is that staffing at tsa has dropped by more than 10 since 2011. At the same time the staffing has gone down passenger volume at our airports has increased by more than 10 . Tsa must be nimble enough to handle this growth in air travel, especially the surges that occur during the busy Summer Travel season like were seeing now and at other times during the year. The good news is that admiral neffenger and secretary johnson have moved quickly to reduce wait times and do some without compromising security. Is there more we can do . Sure there is. Im going to talk about a couple of those things. Based on the reports that weve seen these efforts are already beginning to bear fruit and help keep passengers moving during the busy memorial day weekend. But security, let me just say this, security in our airplanes, it cannot all be on tsa and admiral neffenger and his leadership team. This is a shared responsibility. It cannot all be on tsa and mr. Neffenger. Congress must work with the administration to ensure that the agency has the resources it needs to effectively carry out their mission. Funding levels and Appropriations Bills awaiting action, we have some appropriators here, you folks are doing a good job with respect to funding levels with the tsa and they move tsa in the right direction. We need to enact those bills. But airport and air carriers have a responsibility to reduce wait times as well. Ive been encouraged with the willingness of private sector stakeholders to contribute their own resources and ideas to solve this problem. A longer Term Solution is being administrated, we just talked about it, its been demonstrated in realtime at Londons Heathrow airport. In the spirit of finding out what works and doing more of that tsa announced an innovation lane in atlanta, im sure we will hear more about them in a partnership between tsa and Delta Airlines to improve passenger throughput by 29 . While that shows great promise over the Long Haul Airlines have taken a number of steps that can make a difference which is reassigning their own employees to help tsa in some places. The most important step we can take is continue to dramatically grow participation in trusted Traveler Programs like pre check that speed the vetting of the speed of the screening of vetted passengers and shortened wait times for those not in pre check lines. Im encouraged by steps that tsa has taken to increase pre check enrollments, were told they have soared by 3500 a day to 16,000 a day at the end of last month where we look forward to learning more today about additional ways we can encourage enrollment in this program. Its important to keep in mind there are very Real Security lets through Aviation System. These guys arent stupid. Theyre trying to come up with bombs that are harder for dogs to detect. Todays solution may not work tomorrow. Those are already changing their tactics that require that we constantly address airport screening checks and airplanes. We need to stay on top of growth in air travel and changing travel patterns so tsa and their partners are not caught with dealing with logistical challenges they arent prepared for. That is why strong leadership is critical seeing us through these difficult times. Leadership is a lot like integrity. Integrity, if you dont have it nothing else happens. I think we are blessed for leadership and im grateful admiral neffenger for your willingness to serve. This is a shared responsibility each of us need to do our part. If we do we will be much safer as a nation. Lets roll. Thank you. Thank you, senator carper. It is the tradition to swear in witnesses. If you will stand and raise your right hand. Do you wear swear the testimony you will give before this committee will be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god . Please be seated. Our first witness is admiral Peter Neffenger. Admiral neffenger is the admiral of the security and safety administration. He mansion a workforce of 60,000 employees. Is responsible for Security Operations at approximately 440 airports throughout the you straights. Prior to joining tsa he served as the commandante. Thank you, chairman. Good morning, chairman johnson, Ranking Member carper, distinguished members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. I sincerely appreciate the committees oversight and support of tsa and our important counterterrorism mission. Since taking office on july 4th last year ive traveled extensively to observe our operations and meet with our employees and they are truly impressive. Their patriotism, sense of duty, commitment is exemplary. I committed to addressing the immediate challenges we faced in our Security Mission while positioning tsa for the future. To that end over the past 11 months we have undertaken a systematic and deliberate transportation of tsa. Our strategies included through elements, first focus on Security Effectiveness in the wake of the Inspector Generals findings that was our fundamental mission and that is our most important mission. Second, resourcing to meet demand and third transforming the system. We are holding ourselves accountable to high standards of effectiveness and were supporting our front line officers in their critical counterterrorism mission. We have renewed our focus on security, revised alarm resolution procedures, ceased risky practices, retained the entire workforce and ensure we stay focused. With Congress Help we overhauled our approach to training at all levels of the agency including leadership training and established the first ever tsa academy in january 1st of this year with initial course offerings focused on training front Line TransportationSecurity Officers. This intensive training enables tsa to achieve consistency, develop a culture, instill core values and raise performance. Second, we are resourcing to meet demand. With help from congress we halted the reduction of our screening workforce this past year, we are making investments in new technology, converting parttime officers to fulltime, shifting screeners and k9 resources to high volume airports, we have begun hiring federal air marshals consistent with our new operations. We completed a review of personnel policies and practices which led to a number of significant changes and we are designing a Human CapitalManagement System to address recruitment, development, promotion, assignment and retention. Third, we are transforming tsa in fundamental ways to ensure mature enterprise wide approach and an agency prepared to address the real and sustained terrorist threat. We have reinvigorated partnerships with the airlines, Airport Operators and were working closely with congress to address the ongoing Security Commission demands. Were overhauling Management Practices across the agency. We conducted an independent review of our acquisition program, were building a new planning programming budgeting and execution process, were modernizing among other initiatives our Innovation Team is taking advantage of existing technology to establish automated lanes at selected checkpoints and as noted, through a Public Private partnership with Delta Airlines we have installed two new automated lanes done in nine weeks and became operational in atlanta. Initial results show dramatic improvements. We have similar projects planned in the coming months. This year tsa will screen some 742 Million People projected. By comparison in 2013 tsa screened 643 Million People. So our approach to screening requires a similar transformation and we are meeting that challenge head on. With the support of corporation for our recent reprogramming request we have brought on board 768 new tsa officers, our federal Security Directors have redeployed behavior detection officers as needed, we placed additional k9 teams at our highest volume airports and activated our deployment search to search the airports of greatest need. And were beginning to see positive results. Nationwide over memorial day 99 of passengers waited less than 30 minutes in standard security lines, 93 of passengers waited less than 15 minutes and in pre check lines 93 of passengers waited less than five minutes. Over that sixday period since last memorial day we screened 10. 3 million passengers, a 3 increase over the same period last year and we did so effectively and in a way that protected the system. Four factors in my opinion have contributed to our ability to move people more efficiently and effectively through check points, first, the new resources that we receive from congress through the reprogramming and other proactive efforts have allowed us to effectively open more checkpoint lanes at peak periods to manage the volume. Second, we placed a Strategic Focus on the seven largest airports in the system because if you can prevent problems from happening there you dont have problems that cascade throughout the system. Third, we established a National Incident command center, this allows us to focus daily on screening, operations, hour by hour at the seven largest airports to look to see what the challenges are as they develop and to move resources in realtime to address those challenges. We have expanded that to the top 20 largest airports and this is a fulltime command center which will stay in operation. Finally we are conducting daily operational calls from a that command Center Airport by airport with the airports, airlines and federal Security Directors to ensure collaboration, information sharing and realtime movement of necessary resources. None of this would have been possible without the tremendous efforts of our front line officers. They have performed admirably and always deserve our thanks but we are not celebrating and we are not letting up. Passenger volume will remain high throughout the summer and we will need to continue to manage resources aggressively. In the short term tsa Airlines Airports congress and travelers working together can improve the Passenger Experience while maintaining security. Id like to thank the airlines and airports for hiring staff to support nonsecurity duties in the airports, but longer term we know we have to continue to right size tsa to ensure we meet the demands placed upon us. We look forward to working with congress to get it right both in terms of staffing and developing new approaches to aviation security. Our front line officers are focused on their Security Mission