Democratic leaders of the House and Senate said on Sunday that they favored a federal takeover of airport security, and the Republican leaders raised no objection.
Representative Dick Gephardt, the House minority leader, said on the NBC program Meet the Press that he hoped for a federal takeover. "I think we must convince the American people very quickly that it's safe to go to airports and to get on airplanes and fly as we did before Sept. 11," he said, "and I think the federal government has the central responsibility to do that."
On the same program, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert said, "I think the American people deserve no less than the most competent people to be there at those gates to go through and check individuals and luggage and to make sure that the American public is safe."
The transportation secretary, Norman Mineta, is waiting for recommendations from two study panels, due in the next few days, a spokesman said.
In testimony on Friday, Jane Garvey, the head of the Federal Aviation Administration, said that taking over the job of screening passengers at the approximately 700 checkpoints at the nation's airports could cost US$1.8 billion a year. Hastert said, "I'm not sure how we're going to fund this. It might be the government's responsibility to do that. We haven't made that decision yet."
On the Senate side, Tom Daschle, the South Dakota Democrat who is the majority leader, said that restoring public confidence was essential and that "federal control is the best way to do this, at least for a period of time."
Daschle added, "Maybe there will be another way that would be equally as effective down the road, but right now I can't think of a better alternative."
Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi, the minority leader, said Congress should get to the security question very soon, but he did not comment on the merits of a federal takeover.
Currently, the 700 or so passenger-screening checkpoints are almost all operated by contractors. The airlines have chosen nearly universally to give the job to companies that specialize in security, generally the lowest bidder. The FAA imposes security rules on airlines. If the contractors do not meet the federal standards, the aviation agency fines the airlines.
For several years, the agency has been working to write rules to regulate the contractors directly. Before the hijackings on Sept. 11, it had hoped to issue those rules by the end of this month. Now, it is holding off.
Despite suggestions that the airport screening job be handed to the federal government, no one has specified exactly what that would mean. Critics, including the Transportation Department's inspector general and the General Accounting Office, the congressional audit agency, have pointed out that jobs at the airport checkpoints pay less than jobs at adjacent fast-food restaurants, and that average job tenure is measured in months.
Screeners are supposed to be legal residents of the US and are not supposed to have major criminal convictions on their records, but security companies have sometimes failed to verify the status or records of those they are hiring. Since the hijackings, some critics have questioned whether verification of immigration status is adequate even when done properly; some of the suspected hijackers were in this country legally.
Turnover is so rapid that anyone who wanted to take such a job to gain knowledge of the security system for any reason could probably have done so.
In tests, the screeners' ability to detect smuggled weapons fell in the 1990s to 80 percent from 90 percent, and then the FAA stopped releasing the numbers altogether.
Critics say that if trainers had more experience the employees would be more proficient, although critics have not cited studies that compare performance with length of time on the job.
Another problem with the existing system, critics say, is that the airlines are responsible, and that as long as their main goal is getting passengers on airplanes on time, the thoroughness of the checks will vary with the length of the line of people waiting to be cleared; if the line gets too long, the checks will be cursory.
Mineta was asked at two hearings on Thursday whether he favored a federal takeover, and he replied that the Bush administration had not yet decided. Responding to the lawmakers' televised comments on Sunday, Chet Lunner, the department's chief spokesman, said that the two study teams, one on airplane security and one on airport security, appointed a week ago, were meeting daily and that they were due to report by Oct. 1 at the latest.
Referring to the comments by the congressional leaders, Lunner said, "None of those statements would be inconsistent with what the secretary's been saying. We're all looking to improve the level of security at airports, and the question is in the details, how exactly we go about that."
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