During the same week that the Lawton Fort Sill Chamber of Commerce announced grants for the Transportation Security Administration agents at the Lawton airport, President Donald Trump and Markwayne Mullin, the new chief of the Department of Homeland Security, said they had taken steps to pay TSA agents.
Late last week, the Associated Press reported that Trump signed a promised executive action to pay Transportation Security Administration employees, after a deal that sought to do the same stalled in Congress.
Trump signed the action with an eye toward easing long security lines at many of the nation’s top airports.
“America’s air travel system has reached its breaking point,” Trump said in the memo authorizing the payments. “I have determined that these circumstances constitute an emergency situation compromising the Nation’s security.”
Trump said his administration would use “funds that have a reasonable and logical nexus to TSA operations” for the payments.
In a statement released on Friday, Mullin said TSA workers “should begin seeing paychecks as early as Monday.” The checks for local TSA agents come just days after the Lawton Fort Sill Chamber stepped in to assist agents with small grants.
Officials in the Trump administration – who were not identified – said the money for the paychecks would come from the tax bill Trump signed last year. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss it publicly. They compared the move to actions Trump took during a past shutdown to pay troops.
Trump’s action came after House Republicans rejected a Senate-passed bill to fund most of the Department of Homeland Security, a revolt that risks delaying a resolution to the funding impasse now in its 42nd day that has created long lines at many of the nation’s airports.
“This gambit that was done last night is a joke,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday.
Johnson said that instead House Republicans would seek to pass a bill that would fund the entire department at current levels until May 22. He also said he had spoken with Trump about the House Republican plan and the president “supports it.”