TSA Under Fire, Gohmert Calls to Scrap Screeners

The Senate Homeland Security Committee is examining the latest revelations of major security breaches at the Transportation Security Administration.

Last week, a report revealed TSA agents failed on a massive scale, dropping the ball on 67 out of 70 security tests at America's busiest airports.

Another report this week showed that TSA officials failed to identify 73 workers with links to terrorism.

The chairman of that Senate committee, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., opened a hearing Tuesday by asking four government watchdogs and TSA employees to give honest assessments of the problems.

A federal security official admitted that potentially threatening people are being hired at airports around the country.

"There are other airport employees who have access to sterile areas of the airport who only have to get a criminal record check and security threat assessments," Rebecca Roering, assistant federal security director at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, testified.

"This group has unimpeded access to aircraft and it was later discovered that some of them travelled to Syria to go fight for ISIS," she continued.

When it comes to screening passengers, Homeland Security Inspector General John Roth stressed that TSA needs to have a better understanding of the limits of its technology.

"We identified vulnerabilities caused by human and technology-based errors," he said. "These weaknesses have a real and negative impact on transportation security as well."

Witnesses at the Senate hearing called for more cooperation between the FBI, TSA, and Homeland Security to expand background checks for airport personnel and passengers that may be on terror watch lists.

But Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, told CBN News maybe it's time to scrap the current TSA screening system and go back to the way things used to be.

"I do think we were doing pretty good with privatized security. I think it would be a good idea to go back to that. The whole effort to make TSA a federal agency was to increase the number of government union members. It did that, but it has not helped us make our country safer," Gohmert said.

He said TSA agents have told him about workers who aren't doing a good job, but it's extremely difficult to fire union workers.

"There are so many hoops you have to jump through to fire a government union member, a civil servant. If it's under private control they can fire you like that if you don't take care of business and you're not doing a good job with security," he explained.

Gohmert said the current system is failing on many levels.

"Clearly, we waste so much money. It's not that I don't enjoy being groped up and down by the TSA agents as often as I get groped, but come on! There are people getting things through that should never get through," he said.