1,000 TSA agents still haven't gotten paychecks from Trump shutdown

More than a month after Trump finally caved to Democrats and ended his destructive 35-day government shutdown, more than 1,000 Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents have still not received the back pay they are owed, CNN reports.

What’s more, TSA admits it has no idea when all of its employees will be paid in full.

In a call with field offices, TSA headquarters complained that its help desk had been overloaded with complaints about missing pay, according to a transcript obtained by CNN.

The problem arose from TSA’s frantic efforts to keep employees working during the Trump shutdown. As more and more financially strapped TSA screeners started calling out sick because they couldn’t afford to come to work without pay anymore, the agency gave some employees a partial paycheck based on work they performed in late 2018.

“They were scrambling to keep people on the job because you had a number of sick outs taking place,” an anonymous official told CNN.

Paying those employees caused an administrative mess, however. “It appears as though their effort to partially pay people screwed things up and they are still getting their act together,” the source added.

The shutdown started in late December when Trump threw a tantrum demanding $5.7 billion for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Democrats refused, so Trump and his complicit Republican lackeys in Congress refused to fund the government for more than a month.

The results were disastrous, as 800,000 federal workers went weeks without pay, with many resorting to visiting food pantries in order to feed their families. Trump put national security at risk, and some airports had to temporarily shut down.

When Trump finally relented and ended his pointless shutdown, he promised federal employees that he would make their back pay a priority.

But more than a month later, yet another of Trump’s promises has proven to be empty.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.