Vance says Thanksgiving travel "could be a disaster" if government is still shut down
Across town at the White House, Vice President JD Vance spoke to reporters after a meeting with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and aviation industry officials about the shutdown's impact on air travel. He said the shutdown could wreak havoc on Americans' travel plans if the stalemate is not resolved by Thanksgiving.
"It could be a disaster. It really could be. Because at that point, we're talking about people who have missed three paychecks, they've missed four paychecks. How many of them are not going to show up for work?" Vance said, referring to federal employees at airports. "You take the TSA lines that are already too long, even right now, and say half of those people don't show up for work. Not because they're not hard workers or good people, but because they've got to find a different job to feed their families. What happens when the security lines are not an hour long, but they're four hours long?"
TSA agents and air traffic controllers have been working without pay since the shutdown began. Staffing shortages from workers who have called out have been popping up across the country as the shutdown continues. In 2019, travel-related disruptions caused by TSA workers calling in sick were seen as a major factor in ending the shutdown, which was the longest in history at 34 days.
Vance said large staffing shortages would "lead to massive delays."
"We want people to be able to get home for Thanksgiving. We want people to be able to travel for business, to make this entire engine of commerce work. We want the aviation industry to work. It's not going to work unless the Democrats reopen the government," the vice president said. "These guys are doing heroic things to make it work as well as it possibly can, but every single person I've talked to, to a word, they're worried that the delays are going to reach a point where it makes it very, very hard for the American people to fly."