Changes put into these airports, the rationale behind some of this stuff absolutely makes no sense from a security standpoint. Riskbased security is a title thats slapped on everything. And the motto is from the Previous Administration theres never been a risk i wasnt willing to accept. Its like dealing with a Financial Investor. You give a Financial Investor 100,000 of your money and he or she will do things with it they would never do with their own. Thats one example of the logic that goes in and the thought process that goes in. One of my counterparts took a survey over a period of five months with calls that we have with tsa leadership prior to mr. Neffengers arrival. There were 147 topics discussed, not one was security related. They may have talked about playbook or some security aspect but there was always a metric driving it and it was a running joke. This is the priority of that leadership. Let me jump to another point here. Can you walk us through the process that tsa engages when they are evaluating a potential new hire. At which level, sir . At any level. A new hire in Management Level specifically but any other. Whats the process that tsa walks through . It varies. With officers obviously theres an online process and locally were not involved in that. Well do candid assessments and so forth. Theres a background check. I dont get a lot of insight of that. Posting it on usa jobs. Then you have within the ses level and those are done by the executive Resource Council at tsa headquarters. It varies with different components. Mr. Rhodes, complaints to leadership at tsa going unacknowledged, ignored, et cetera, have you ever heard justification for these complaints not being accepted or reviewed . No, sir, theres no logical explanation for that. What explanations have been given . Precisely, none. None at all . No contacts, no emails, ive got a differing opinion, thats a good idea, nothing. So it just happens, allowed to happen . I cant answer that. The only thing i can answer, sir, is i have not been contacted. Thank you. I yield back. The gentleman from massachusetts. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I want to thank the witnesses for your help on the committee with its work today. In my previous life i was a Union Steward and a Union President and later on a labor lawyer practicing labor law on behalf of unions. Im just curious, when i was a steward on the work site, when i had employees that were being treated unfairly, i would take it on myself. That would be my job. I would deal with management and make sure that people were being treated fairly. That way, my workers werent continually banging heads with management. It was me. I sort of enjoyed that work, but a lot of people dont. Would it be helpful at all in your workplace if you had somebody like that that you could go to that would i know that afgee is the signatory in the workplace but you dont have full bargaining rights and all the rights that the other federal employees have. Would that be helpful . Sir, id like to answer that. Id like to first answer this by saying my afg president from minnesota is here in attendance in support of this testimony. Great. I think the fact that she is here supporting me talking about mismanagement in my agency is a powerful signal, hopefully, to my agency. Ill start off by saying this. My afg president in minneapolis and i sat in my office. The management wanted to fire this person because he made a mistake. When i looked at the penalties, it was excessive. I did whats called a designated grievance official. I reversed it, eliminated it. We had a great conversation in my office. I owned the decision. Like i said, as long as you have ethical leaders willing to do the right thing and not be coerced from the top, it could work, but it requires ethical leadership. I understand that. Totally off topic, i grew up in brain tree, massachusetts. Thats my district. Yes, sir. Youre still voting there, you know. I wish i could. We know how youll vote anyway so well do that on your behalf. Yes, sir. I dont want to spend a lot of time on that. Just what do you think, mr. Livingston . Sir, the most important thing about tsa is the people. The people and the mission. If you dont make the two match, tsas never going to get better. Weve got a great leader but its getting lost in translation. Look, im very happy to hear about mr. Neffenger and hes been before this committee. Hes a frequent flier here and he is trying to put in some of the changes that we need. I want to jump to Something Else though. We did talk with mr. Neffenger about the look, check points are very important. If you google check point bombings or check point attacks, you look at what happened in brussels. You look at what happened at the airport check point, at the rail check point, suicide bombers detonating at both of those. Look at paris outside the stadium where president hollande was watching the game between france and germany. Those suicide bombers hit at the check point. So what goes on at that check point is incredibly important. We got to have a whole different strategy for how we handle that because thats been the focal point of all these attacks. And im not calling out my tsa screeners, but as the ranking democrat on the National Security subcommittee, i go to those classified briefings and i saw what the Inspector General did, sending people through with ace bandages with knives in there or a gun strapped to their leg. I got to tell you, like 90 of those folks got through. 90 of them. These are major airports in our country. So im not looking to place the blame on any particular aspect of this, but that is unacceptable. So we got to work together. Mr. Neffenger has said hes going to go back and redesign this whole thing so that well do a better job at that. But i cannot not criticize when we have a 90 failure rate. So thats got to change. We got a lot of turnover and i think some of that is related to the fact that we dont the way we treat our employees. This ought to be a profession. These folks are doing incredibly important work. People yell about protecting our borders. Well, that screener at that airport, that is your border. We got to make sure that those employees have the protection and the rights to be able to do their job. One of the things im concerned about and this is what i want to ask you about. My concern from a National Security standpoint is whether or not those passengers are screened efficiently. The airline priority is moving people through that check point and getting thats why you got these people being timed, your screeners being timed on how many people whats the wait time on getting these people through. Anybody who travels and we all travel regularly, you got to get there a little earlier, you got to adjust your schedule in case you do have an alert or Something Like that at the airport and we want our screeners to do a damn good job. So the priority has to be safety and security and whats going on at that check point. It cant be the airline needs to move product, needs to move people through that. So what do you think is winning out today between those two priorities . Effective screening or moving passengers, thats the priority thats prevailing today in our nations airports . Sir, i dont speak for the agency but i can tell you that were not going to compromise security for speed. I can tell you that were going to balance it. Tsa is not going to compromise our mission to expedite passengers through at the expense of our mission. What were going to do is get better. Were going to keep pushing precheck, pushing a better process, and were going to get more people and were going to get better at this. Mr. Neffenger has made it a priority. Theres a day that doesnt go by at tsa where this isnt the priority. I can tell you that every single Senior Leader that he talks to at tsa, this is the topic of discussion. Okay. I dont want you to think that its not a priority. Okay. But i got to go back to the original point i made earlier, he needs the right team to do it. Sure. Sir, if i can, i work in the Field Operation and im responsible for everything in the state of kansas. I was at maine last year, iowa ten years before that, indiana before that. Theres a stereotype with the airlines that all they care about is Customer Service. Thats not accurate. There are a lot of airlines and airports who partner with tsa every day. We are the only entity with the dhs that deals with three constants, departures, arrivals, connections. When were knnot doing our zob, they have a right to be upset. The problem right now is that the previous Leadership Team oversaw tsa put in a plan a without a plan b. Thats reflective upon that leadership. I dont think theres a day that mr. Neffenger doesnt come to work and he didnt get full disclosure when he took the appointment and god bless him for being here but hes out trying to cheer lead this. But thats why were at where were at. Its the lack of leadership that got us there. We did not have a plan b when we put in plan a. Mr. Chairman, thank you. Let me turn to the gentleman from alabama, mr. Palmer. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Mr. Rhodes, i believe you used to work alongside former acting head ken kass prizen. He has stated before that thousands of airport workers who are only subject to random checks are the single greatest threat to Aviation Security. Now tsa employees are regularly rooted out rummaging through baggage or inappropriate behavior. My concern is that there are only three u. S. Airports that currently require employee checks. In atlanta they had a major gun running operation busted in 2014. We have reports that theres some 73 employees at about 40 airports who potentially have terrorist ties. At some point is the tsa causing more insecurity than it solves . Frankly, as a very frequent traveler, it gives me some concern that the screening process may identify potential terrorists, yet they continue to work there. Let me try to answer that question, sir. I believe if the tsa was mandated to screen every employee at airports, it would require much more resources. I am unqualified to professionally comment on how much those resources would require, but what i can say is that the minneapolis st. Paul airport, there are i believe over 10,000 people that work at that airport. Obviously some of them come during various times of the day and various shifts, and certainly the Insider Threat has received a new focus based upon world events. But i will say we are resourced in fte. Im unqualified to comment whether we should also receive resources in that but i can say thats not our specific focus. Let me put it this way. Obviously were talking about basic screening, right . Yes, sir. Every staff member that works here goes through screening to get into an office here, and in terms of being able to do their job, if you know you have to go through a screening process, you show up early. Is that unreasonable . No, thats not unreasonable, sir. I think what our administrator has done rightfully so is reducing some of those Access Points at those airports. If youre aside of side badges and various Access Points, those are available to some employees. However, again, i dont have any data to suggest or talk intelligently with respect to how many Access Points. At minneapolis the number of Access Points have been reduced and we continue to reduce them. Think about it for a moment, if we know theres the tsa thinks theres 73 potential employees potentially with terrorist ties, thats who theyve identified that there might be potentially others and that were not screening them, it doesnt give you a high comfort level. I dont disagree with you, sir. Mr. Brainard, id like to follow up on mr. Duncans questions regarding wasteful spending. You described expenditures such as 300,000 on an absentee director. A 12 million budget thats three times its original amount. I could amount ask for a hearing on project overruns. 336,000 on an app that you, mr. Brainard, described being as effective as a ouija board. Im sure the more we continue to hear from other employees at different airports were going to continue to hear similar stories to that effect. You might be aware that last april the tsa Aviation SecurityAdvisory Committee released a report concluding that they could not afford full employee screening and it would not reduce Insider Threats. Do you believe this illustrates where the priorities lie when you look at this other spending . Thank you for the question, sir. When it comes to spending, another example to give you where they could have put the money into making toward making Something Like that happen. When they did the directed reassignments i went from iowa to maine. I had received near perfect evaluation. There was no vacancy in maine. The federal Security Director m maine received a perfect evaluation. He was sent to wisconsin. Between the two of us youre talking in excess of a quarter Million Dollars that was earmarked for those directors. All of these federal Security Directors were performing in excessive standards. No federal Security Director had more experience, the Main Operation was smaller and less complex than i had. The fsd in arkansas, north carolina, los angeles. His spouse from los angeles to washington d. C. There was no reason for these moves. I dont know what the price tag is on all those moves, but we could have certainly used that funding more appropriately. Well, and that just brings me back to the point i was trying to make with mr. Rhodes. Youre spending all this money and we know that not every tsa employee is up to standard. Potentially 73 may have terrorist ties. But were spending all this money and were not investing in the Security Apparatus that we need to make sure absolutely positively certain that we have the very best people on the job and that were protecting our airports. I saw you shaking your head, dr. Livingston. I presume you may have a comment. Sir, full disclosure, just like my partner to the left, were from the same area as well. Im from hackleburg, alabama and i live in hoover. By the way, today is the fiveyear anniversary of the tornados that went through alabama with such devastating impact. Wow, okay. Thank the gentleman. Did you want to finish your response . Yes, sir. To answer your question, there needs to be greater oversights. I was part of the office that identified that original 73. We didnt have access to the list. I was actually part of the team that decided we needed to notify ntct to say we didnt have access to that database. Ive been part of the team that identified we need to do a better job at screening. So there is an opportunity to do better screening and for tsa to do better monetary discipline. I identified the 10 million excess spent on a watch floor. So yes, sir, there is an opportunity to be more prudent with the taxpayers money. Any time you see an example of waste, fraud, and abuse, weve got to do better. I thank the chairman. I yield back. Thank the gentleman. The gentleman from missouri, mr. Clay. Thank you, mr. Chair. Mr. Livingston, tsa cut its screening staff over the past couple of years, anticipating that its Precheck Program would help speed up the overall process, but not enough passengers have enrolled. News reports have indicated that morale inside the tsa is extremely low which is likely a factor contributing to staffing shortages affecting tsa security. Reports indicate that travelers are arriving at Security Check points where not all available ques are open for general screening. I can attest to that going through st. Louiss airport. Im part of the Precheck Program but more often than not its closed. Im told by officers that they dont have enough people to staff it. Is there a longterm strategy to fix the morale issue and the employment issue . Yes, sir. There is a plan. I know that the administrator has touted the fact that were putting 200 extra tso officers through the academy each week. Both of my counterparts can speak to the screening process. From the precheck standpoint i know that were putting more advertising out to get more people enrolled. Were trying to get more people into the program, trying to show them the advantages of that. Precheck is a high priority for the agency and were trying to get more people into that. Once we do that, the more people that are in precheck, we can sustain that much better. Ill let my counterpart heres the point. The excuse i get at st. Louis airport is we dont have enough officers to staff it. So is that just something theyre telling me . Sir, there is a staffing issue. I know the administrator has talked to omb about staffing issues. I know that there is a longterm strategy to address that issue. Its a resource issue of both money and people. Its going to take some time but we have addressed that. Theres a short, midterm and a long term plan. Hes working with the senior staff to do that and i think both of these gentlemen who are working in the airport can tell you what theyre doing daily. Some have suggested shifting officers from tsas controversial Behavior Detection Program to regular screeners. So let me go on. Mr. Rhodes, i have a question for you. Kind of concerned about an article im reading about a mohammed fa ra from minneapolis. Are you familiar with him . Yesse. Heres what he says. Theres an Ongoing Program of racial profiling and harassment by tsa agents at the twin cities airport. He said recently he was asked by an agent who said, quote, hey, were you going to make a run for it if i hadnt given your ticket back . And the response hes gotten from tsa and the congressman from that area, mr. Ellison, is that they take these complaints seriously. I think its a little bit more than