Tara Terranova and Ellen Yan, reporting for the New York Times:
The national shortage of Transportation Security Administration workers made for a miserable Sunday at New York City airports, where confusion, exasperation and impatience reigned as travelers waited in line for hours.
The T.S.A. crisis, tied to a partial government shutdown that has meant thousands of employees have been working without pay, hit especially hard at LaGuardia Airport in Queens, where passengers were waiting at least three hours to go through security.
Brutal tales from individual passengers in the piece, including this four hour horror story:
Stephanie Kisgen, 44, an interior designer from Richmond Hill, Ga., and her husband, Patrick Kisgen, arrived at the airport four hours early for their 6:30 p.m. flight and weren’t sure if they would make it.
This is the result of a dispute over policies and funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes the TSA. Democrats have offered a bill that would simply fund the TSA, but do not support legislation that would fund all of DHS.
The US is the only developed country in the world where this regularly happens.