A new report today notes that Obama’s Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) spent $160 million in our tax dollars on airport scanner machines that have a 96% failure rate! Nice going, TSA.
The TSA bought scanner units that cost us all $150,000 each. And they still don’t work.
On Monday, Politico broke the news that the federally run TSA has spent $160 million — or more than $150,000 per unit — on body scanners meant to prevent fliers from bringing contraband onto planes.
And what did taxpayers get for their money?A recent security audit found that TSA scanners failed to stop explosives and weapons 96% of the time.
Sen. Ron Johnson said that the scanners “weren’t even catching metal.” That’s worse than the TSA did in 2004-05, when it screening process missed “only” 70% of the time.This is just the latest in a long string of alarming TSA failures in fielding technology, screening workers and keeping its workers from abusing passengers.
Fully $40 million of the $160 million, for example, went for “naked” X-ray scanners that the TSA later pulled from airports. Another recent audit found the TSA failed to identify 73 airport workers who were on terrorist watch lists. A congressional report in 2011 found that the TSA suffered 25,000 security breaches during the previous decade. And accounts of miscreant TSA agents abusing passengers are legion.
This Obama administration sure knows how to waste our money, doesn’t it? Good thing Obama unionized the TSA so we can’t even fire whoever is responsible for this, huh?