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of the millions of Americans who made their way through airport
security over Thanksgiving weekend could fail to notice the green-uniformed,
automatic-weapon-totting men and women who stood behind security
checkpoints around the country. These National Guard members represent
the first wave of federal employees ordered to secure airports and
other key transportation facilities. When President Bush signed
a bill creating the Transportation Security Agency a week ago, many
conservatives were unhappy: A small-government president agreed
to create a new federal agency bigger than anything Bill Clinton
had pushed through Congress. But Bush did the right thing. A single,
national airport-security force will provide better service than
the market ever could and falls well within the federal governments'
constitutional powers.
Before September
11th, airport-security standards were terrible. Slinging lattes
at Starbucks paid almost twice as much and required four times more
training than inspecting bags at an airport. In 1998, the trade
journal Access Control Systems Integration pointed out that
airport security was one of the least-skilled jobs in entire the
labor force. Even in the post-September 11th environment, private
contractors screw up with alarming frequency: This past Saturday
air traffic snarled all around the western United States when someone
switched off a metal detector in the Seattle airport. While the
Senate passed a bill calling for an all-out federal takeover of
transportation security, conservatives in the house rallied around
a proposal that would have given the federal government the job
of overseeing private security contracts and compromised on a bill
that allows some limited experiments with private contractors.
If the law
allows such experiments, some might ask, why not allow private contractors
to run the whole security operation? At a glance this approach seems
attractive: free-market competition, after all, produces "better"
products. Since so few people try to sneak through security with
the intention of hijacking a plane, however, even the worst inspection
system can go years without experiencing a catastrophic failure.
While most airlines and airport authorities probably realize that
the long-term costs of a failure outweigh the benefits of cheaper
security, the chances of getting caught with lax security are so
low that the quest for lower costs will, in time, give some market
player an incentive to cut security. Given that an airplane hijacking
anywhere would have catastrophic results for the entire economy,
the nation can't allow this possibility.
While federal
agencies such as the FBI and DEA have earned ample criticism in
recent years, such federal agencies still lead the nation in recruiting
the technically skilled and well-educated men and women American
needs for airport security. Even the best local police departments
call in the feds when they need to set up a complex wiretap or trace
a drug cartel's money. Transportation security requires lots of
technical skills: Airport-security workers will conduct CT scans,
identify concealed knives and explosives and detect bombs based
on miniscule chemical traces. An agency with national reach, likewise,
will have the best chance of attracting and retaining skilled men
and women; no private contractor can offer the career possibilities
or prestige of a federal law-enforcement agency.
A look at the
Constitution shows that running airport security falls well within
the Founders' restrictions on federal power even without reference
to the overused interstate commerce clause. Specifically, the Constitution
gives the federal government the power to "to define and punish
Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas." Many federal
and state laws define hijacking as "air piracy" and it
takes only a moments' thought to realize that airline hijacking
and sea piracy are the same crime committed on a different sort
of vessel.
The Founders
took their anti-piracy responsibility seriously and the new nation's
first major foreign operation involved protecting Mediterranean
shipping from 18th century Middle Eastern terrorists known as the
Barbary Pirates. In the short term, the government could have mitigated
the problem by paying the pirates tribute on an ongoing basis. Instead,
however, the U.S. took the high-cost long-term solution of building
alliances and naval warships capable of taking on the pirates. The
buildup worked and by 1805, the U.S. had beaten back the pirates.
This successful campaign established the new nation as world power
and freed American commerce to expand around the globe.
The modern
airways are far safer than the high seas of yore but the costs of
failing to secure them remain very steep. President Bush and Congress
have made the right move in reasserting their constitutional role
in protecting the safety, security, and freedom of the nation's
vital transportation systems.
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