End hardships for working Americans: Donald Trump and maga Republicans must stand in the long airport lines they created to fly our of Washington DC

No breaks for Congress until TSA funded | A Baltimore Sun editorial.

Wait in long TSA security lines at John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) in the Queens borough of New York, Monday, March 23, 2026. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)

Whatever modest (untrained) help is provided by the Trump administration’s decision to deploy Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to help reduce long lines at airport security this week, it’s time Congress approves at least a stopgap measure to fund the Transportation Security Administration, if not the entirety of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

And if Democrats and Republicans can’t find common ground on such thorny issues as the masking of ICE agents or when exactly those agents must use judicial warrants❓💢 Negotiators should be locked in a room until they agree to some compromise.

That would be an inconvenience, but it would also be a relatable experience to Americans now so often stuck in outrageously long security lines at BWI Marshall Airport and many of its counterparts across the country.

As for any members of Congress planning to go on break at the end of this week for the Easter holiday, we’re with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who said that won’t happen while the DHS funding issue remains unresolved. 

We would expect House Speaker Mike Johnson to do the same even if the current impasse rests in the other chamber. 

The sooner any compromise produced in the Senate can be approved by the full Congress, the better. All members should be embarrassed by this failure. It’s not a partisan thing; it’s a good government thing.

No doubt senators are hearing plenty of negative feedback from constituents who travel. They’ll hear even more if the long security lines impact Easter travel. And keep in mind, it isn’t really just about having to wait — heavy travel days sometimes force delays, no matter whether TSA agents are getting paid or not — but the sheer stupidity of it all. How ICE conducts enforcement is an important and hotly debated issue, and it’s understandable that neither party is eager to cede ground. Now, can we also agree that the political leverage of a budget bill can only be asserted so far❓

Priorities such as saving political face and boosting chances in the midterms should come after looking out for American voters who are facing punishing lines and missing flights across the country.

We get the performative elements of politics. It’s always been this way. But ,this is also a time when voters have clearly lost patience with all the theatrics coming out of Washington, D.C., and expect their elected officials to behave like adults.

The current crop of D.C. movers and shakers have already demonstrated that they aren’t quite as embarrassed by a government shutdown as they ought to be — last year’s edition lasted a record 43 days. The DHS shutdown is already approaching that historic number.

All those Americans standing in a line right now that did not have to exist are likely asking, when do members of Congress do their own jobs and find a compromise❓ The last thing to do is reward any of these players with a nice holiday vacation. Keep everyone at their posts. It’s the least they can do.

Baltimore Sun editorial writers offer opinions and analysis on news and issues relevant to readers.

Donald Trump and the "Bible TRumping" Republican Speaker Mike Johnson enacted "Mass Cruelty" in the Big Bad Ugly Bill

New York Times Opinion by Brendan Buck*

Is This Really How We’re Legislating Now❓

"Bad political process can lead to bad policy and bad politics"
"...no serious effort was made to cover the costs of the tax cuts and new spending".

"Bible TRumping" Speaker Mike Johnson once again defied skeptics and found a majority in a high-stakes vote, with the House passing Donald Trump's big bad ugly policy bill on Thursday along party lines with a few Republicans voting with Democrats to oppose the Mass Cruelty legislation. 

"Bible Trumping" Speaker Johnson and John Thune, the Senate leader, ably made whatever deals and promises were necessary to get the bill through their chambers, and Republicans are celebrating it as a major victory. But, the wobbly passage of the fiscal package says more about the frivolity of the game Congress now plays than it does about how well (or badly ❗) G.O.P. congressional leaders played it.

Few seem to be happy with the actual product. 

(As a matter of fact, Senator Angus King I-ME on the Senate Floor: "This Tax Bill is 'Irresponsible, Regressive, and Downright Cruel'”.

Republicans and Democrats alike have found plenty to criticize about the substance of the bill: the cost, the cuts, the gimmicks. Just as concerning, though, is the way it came together — and what that says about America’s once admired legislative body.

The process was marred by dynamics that have increasingly undermined Congress’s status as a dominant and deliberative institution: The bill lacked a clear and inspired purpose; it supplanted the expertise of congressional committees for the whims of holdouts and the president; and it relied on the make-or-break reconciliation mechanism that limits the ability to write sound policy.

Congress is no longer in the business of thoughtful legislating. Its role has been reduced to putting political points on the board for the president.

Senator Joni Ernst as a a prophet:🙄 "We are all going to die"
IOW cuts to Medicaid will just accelerate the inevitable.

There are a series of changes in how leadership and legislating in Washington works. Republican House members have long argued that too much power is centralized in the speaker’s office. They’ve chafed at speakers, including the two I worked for, who have presented them with a plan and told them it was either the right way to go or the best we could do.

"Bible TRumping" Speaker Johnson has taken this criticism to heart, and his staying power as speaker can in part be attributed to the light touch he takes with his conference. 

This big bad bill was not viewed as the "'Bible TRumping" Mike Johnson plan". Seemingly his only restraint was what could get 218 votes in the House.

But, members of Congress today are not well suited to fill that policy vacuum. Too many see their jobs as playing characters in the Trump melodrama rather than serving as policymakers in a separate and equal legislative branch.

The downsides of this dynamic should now be clear.

Congress, particularly the House, is a body built around committees, which have jurisdiction over various areas of policy. This is where expertise is supposed to be housed. Historically, members of these committees have jealously defended their policy terrain, and they have been given deference to do their jobs.

However, this critical architecture has been collapsing in recent years. In this instance, "Bible TRumping" Speaker Johnson allowed rank-and-file members to end-run the committees of jurisdiction. After the committee process, the bill was workshopped through a series of hasty negotiations with holdout members such as with the changes to the state and local tax deductions. Medicaid policy, affecting tens of millions of Americans, appears to have been made on the fly.

In the Senate, the bill didn’t even go through a full, open committee process, and policy was still being written last weekend as senators began voting to proceed.

With committees relegated, there was no ownership of the product — and certainly little pride in it. With Medicaid, changes on the table ranged from adding work requirements for those receiving benefits to a wholesale restructuring of how the federal government funds the program. Until late in the process, many members didn’t know what was in or out, and certainly not how to sell it.

This lack of definition allowed Democrats to pounce. Bad process can lead to bad policy and bad politics.

I don’t mean the all-night voting in the Senate or both chambers passing legislation before official scorekeepers had even provided final cost estimates. Those are just unfortunate realities of legislative politics. There’s another process story that has been building for decades across both parties, as Congress increasingly relies on large legislative vehicles like this. Many of the issues with this package can be traced to the decision to put everything in one big bill. With little interest in policymaking through regular order, or bipartisan compromise, the majority is left to place all its eggs in the basket of the budget reconciliation process.

The wonky rules of the reconciliation process give the majority a narrow crack at avoiding the Senate filibuster — but the process also significantly limits how policy can be written. Generally speaking, everything must be drafted to address matters of spending or revenue. The 1974, Budget Act that created this process was intended to help Congress balance the budget. It’s now being used for issues like artificial intelligence standards and immigration policy.

This is a poor mechanism for addressing the nuances of complex policy. It also functionally means that the biggest policy changes both parties are making are increasingly partisan ones. 

Since Republicans are uninterested in working with Democrats through regular order, this bill was also viewed as the only train leaving the station — so anything and everything Republicans could think to throw in the bill, they did.😖😔😡😨

The legislative stew that resulted is not fine-tuned policy, nor does it offer a cohesive purpose. It’s just good enough for a Congress that doesn’t particularly care about being any better than “good enough.”

The bill does not improve America’s tax code. An extension of the 2017, tax law — which significantly simplified the tax code and which I helped pass as well as later working with groups that wanted it extended — ended up littered with new carve-outs and gimmicks, like no taxes on tips or overtime.

It does not strengthen our health care system. While the bill makes significant policy changes, and millions of Americans will feel the impact of Medicaid cuts, the motivation behind the bill’s health care reforms was budget savings — not better health care service or outcomes.

It will not better the nation’s fiscal trajectory. Despite the Medicaid cuts, no serious effort was made to cover the costs of the tax cuts and new spending.

There wasn’t even anything particularly MAGA about the bill.

None of that mattered. Leaders bet that members would not deny Donald Trump his bill signing, and they were right. 

Before final passage, there were gaping pockets of opposition from every corner of the House conference, almost all waved off by the simple argument that Republicans could not let Trump down. (OMG, this is not legislating, this is an abdication of legislative responsibility and a violation of the oaths taken by every legislator.)💥💢❗

In the opening of his 2006, book, “The House,” the historian Robert Remini wrote: “The United States House of Representatives is regarded by many as the finest deliberative body in human history. A grand conceit, to be sure. But one that is not far from the mark. It is an extraordinary instrument for legislating the will of the American people.”

Less than two decades later, the passage reads as comedy 🎭— or is a deeply depressing tragedy 🤢, depending on your lens.

*Buck is a contributing writer who worked for two Republican speakers of the House, John Boehner and Paul Ryan.