Ask officers why TSA cannot afford its own equipment and many will give you the same answer: the money was taken. Every airline ticket carries a $5.60 fee, collected after September 11 to pay for aviation security, and Congress has been diverting a large share of it to the general Treasury since 2014. That is true. It is written into statute, it was a legislative decision, and it explains a great deal about why airports are now buying screening equipment themselves and gifting it to the agency.
So when a bill passes the House with the word SAFEGUARDS in the title and press releases describing it as ending the diversion, it is reasonable to think the problem is being fixed.
Read the bill.
What It Actually Does
H.R. 8770 passed the House on July 13 and went to the Senate the next day, where it sits with the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. It passed unanimously, under suspension of the rules, which is the procedure Congress uses for bills nobody intends to fight about.
The bill creates two funds. Beginning in fiscal year 2028, the first $500 million of fee revenue goes to the Aviation Security Capital Fund, which already exists. The next $250 million goes to a new Aviation Security Checkpoint Technology Fund, available for "the testing, procurement, deployment, installation, and sustainment of aviation security checkpoint technology."
That is the whole operative content. Two funds, $750 million a year combined, starting two fiscal years from now.
What It Does Not Do
It does not end the diversion.
Section 2 of the bill is a Sense of Congress. It says the fee should be used only for aviation security, that diverting it "undermines public trust and the original intent of the fee," and that the diversion "should be ended no later than 2027."
A Sense of Congress is a statement of opinion. It carries no legal force. The bill does not repeal the diversion, does not amend the statute that created it, and does not set a date certain for it to stop.
And here is the part that matters most. Both funds are written as "subject to the prior termination" of the fees being deposited in the general fund. The money only flows if the diversion ends first. The bill does not end it. It builds the plumbing for a day that some other act of Congress would have to bring about.
The Arithmetic
Set the numbers side by side.
In fiscal year 2025, passengers paid roughly $4.5 billion in security fees. About $2.7 billion came back to TSA. Roughly $1.85 billion did not.
TSA's aviation security operations that year cost $10.4 billion. The gap between what the agency spends and what it collects in dedicated revenue is about $7.7 billion, covered by annual appropriations, which is why a lapse in those appropriations stops your pay.
This bill sets aside $750 million a year, in FY2028, conditionally.
For scale: one airport, Dallas Fort Worth, told Congress in May it will spend more than $50 million of its own money this year buying screening technology and giving it to TSA. Airlines for America testified at the same hearing that at current funding levels, TSA will not finish deploying CT scanners until 2049.
What This Means for You
If you have been telling people that ending the diversion would solve TSA's funding problem, this bill is not that, and the diversion is not the whole problem either.
Ending it entirely would recover something in the range of $1.85 billion against a $7.7 billion gap. It would help. It would not close it. And this bill does not end it.
Why It Matters Anyway
Here is the thing worth sitting with.
The argument for Gold+ is that TSA cannot afford to modernize its checkpoints, so private capital should do it instead. That argument depends entirely on the funding gap being permanent.
At a House Appropriations hearing on February 11, a subcommittee member asked the Acting Administrator whether redirecting $1.68 billion in fee revenue could fund technology deployment. She answered that with appropriate resources, TSA could field technology programs at a much quicker pace.
The Gold+ program brief says the program delivers advanced security technology at little to no additional cost, through private capital.
Both of those cannot be true. Either TSA has a funding problem that money would fix, or it has one that only private capital can fix. The agency has said both, in the same season, to different audiences. And Gold+ was not disclosed at that hearing.
Congress is now doing both. It is legislating a small, delayed, conditional pot of money for checkpoint technology while a $12.9 billion contract to have industry fund and staff the same checkpoints closes to bids on July 31.
Nobody has explained why both are necessary. Nobody was asked.
What Happens Next
The bill is in Senate Commerce. That is the same committee that held the confirmation hearing for the TSA Administrator nominee this week. There is no scheduled action, and no organized opposition, because the bill costs nothing today and takes nothing from anyone.
We will track it. If it moves, we will tell you what changed.
For the mechanism by which airports are already funding checkpoint technology themselves, see Who Pays for the Checkpoint of the Future?. For what TSA told the Gold+ bidders about staffing, see No Number.
If you want to understand how any of this applies to your own situation, that is a conversation worth having. It costs you nothing. againstgiantsllc.com/get-help.html or info@againstgiantsllc.com