The Trump administration released its fiscal year 2027 budget proposal on Friday, and buried inside it was a structural shift that could permanently change how Americans experience airport security. The budget calls for beginning the privatization of the Transportation Security Administration by requiring all small airports to enroll in the Screening Partnership Program, an existing federal mechanism under which TSA pays private contractors to handle passenger screening instead of federal employees. The administration says the move would cut $52 million from the agency's costs and, in the budget's own language, "begin reform of a troubled Federal agency."
The proposal arrives at a politically loaded moment. Over the past six weeks, the partial government shutdown that cut TSA funding left roughly 50,000 federal security officers working without paychecks. Absences surged. By late March, daily absenteeism reached 10 percent or more across major airports. More than 500 TSA officers resigned rather than work unpaid, according to reports from The Independent and CNN. Travelers faced hours-long lines at security checkpoints in cities including Atlanta, Chicago, and New York. The crisis prompted immediate calls from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle for structural reform.
How the Screening Partnership Program Works
The Screening Partnership Program is not new. It has existed since the years immediately following the September 11, 2001 attacks, when Congress created TSA but also allowed airports to apply for private contractors. As of early April 2026, 20 airports in the United States operate under the program. They include San Francisco International Airport, Kansas City International Airport, Orlando Sanford International Airport, and 17 smaller regional airports.
Under the program, TSA does not step aside entirely. Private companies must follow the same federal security protocols, receive the same training requirements, and operate under TSA oversight. What changes is who writes the paychecks. Keith Jeffries, former TSA federal security director at Los Angeles International Airport and current vice president of K2 Security Screening Group, told CNN that the security screeners with private companies "receive the same type of training as TSA."
The result during the shutdown was stark. Nat Carmack of BOS Security, which screens passengers at Tupelo Regional Airport in Mississippi under the program, said in a statement: "Our employees have never missed a paycheck during any of the government shutdowns." Sheldon Jacobson, a founder professor of computer science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who analyzes aviation security data, described it more bluntly in March: "These 20 airports are completely oblivious to the government shutdown."
The Budget Proposal in Detail
The White House budget proposal calls for a $52 million reduction in TSA funding directly tied to requiring smaller airports to enroll in the Screening Partnership Program. The budget document states: "The Budget begins the privatization of TSA's airport screeners by requiring small airports to enroll in the Screening Partnership Program, under which TSA pays for private screeners at designated airports. The airports that already use this program have demonstrated savings compared to Federal screening operations."
Beyond TSA, the 2027 budget request also proposes cutting the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency by $707 million compared to its last funding level, eliminating programs conservatives have characterized as censorship operations. The Department of Homeland Security overall would receive $63 billion in discretionary funding for fiscal 2026 under the plan, a 3.3 percent cut from its last stopgap funding level before appropriations lapsed in February, according to Bloomberg Government. The Federal Emergency Management Agency would also lose certain grant programs, including Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention funding.
Trump has been publicly critical of TSA for years. He fired the agency's administrator, David Pekoske, on his first day back in office and has not nominated a replacement. The previous year's budget proposal had called for a $247 million reduction to the agency, citing what the White House described as TSA's consistent failures in audits and what it called intrusive screening practices.
Scale of the Problem the Proposal Is Responding To
Under the Biden administration, TSA grew to nearly 60,000 employees as air travel rebounded from the pandemic. The agency screened 904 million passengers in 2024, a record high and a 5 percent increase over 2023, according to TSA's own data. That scale makes privatization a complex proposition beyond small airports. Jeffries told CNN that larger airports might take a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" attitude, given the logistical complexity of transitioning large volumes of screening activity to private operators.
Any airport in the United States can currently apply for private screening voluntarily. If TSA approves the application, a contract can be issued within roughly one year, with the private company selected within six months of that, according to BOS Security. The new budget proposal would remove that voluntary element for smaller airports, making enrollment mandatory.
The union representing TSA workers, the American Federation of Government Employees, has historically opposed privatization on the grounds that it reduces wages and benefits for screeners, fragments labor standards, and weakens accountability structures. The union did not issue a statement in response to the Friday budget release by the time of publication.
Political Context: The Shutdown's Legacy
The shutdown that exposed TSA's structural vulnerability began when DHS appropriations lapsed in mid-February. Congress remained divided for weeks. TSA officers worked without pay through late March, with the agency recording an 8.6 percent absence rate even after back pay was finally distributed following a partial funding deal. Over those weeks, airport security operations at federally staffed airports degraded measurably. Passengers at some airports waited two hours or more to clear security checkpoints during peak travel periods.
The administration framed privatization as a solution that would insulate airport security from future congressional standoffs. That argument has precedent in international practice. Canada privatized its air traffic control system through NAV CANADA in 1996. Nearly every European country uses private airport screeners operating under government oversight. The United States has been an outlier in relying primarily on a federal workforce for this function since 2001.
The fiscal 2027 budget proposal is a statement of priorities, not law. It must pass through Congress, where the proposal will face labor committee opposition and skepticism from members representing airports that depend heavily on federal TSA staffing. But the political dynamics shifted during the shutdown. The spectacle of hour-long security lines at American airports while 20 privately contracted airports ran smoothly provided a concrete, visible data point that proponents of privatization did not have before.
Whether Congress acts on the proposal or not, the shutdown of 2026 has permanently changed the terms of the TSA privatization debate.