By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Trump administration on Thursday began airing a video at airports across the country that blames Democrats for a nine-day-old government shutdown that has prompted significant flight delays.
Some 13,000 air traffic controllers and about 50,000 Transportation Security Administration officers must still turn up for work during the government shutdown, but they are not being paid. They are set to get a partial paycheck next week for work performed before the shutdown began.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed the video had begun airing at U.S. airports. The video features Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem saying “Democrats in Congress refuse to fund the federal government, and because of this, many of our operations are impacted and most of our TSA employees are working without pay,” Fox News reported.
There have been 19,000 flight delays in the U.S. since Monday – including 3,300 on Thursday – with thousands tied to the FAA delaying flights because of air traffic controller absences. Republican and Democratic leaders both blame the other side for the shutdown, which started October 1 after Congress failed to approve new spending legislation.
“Every day that Republicans refuse to negotiate to end this shutdown the worse it gets for Americans, and the clearer it becomes who’s fighting for them,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said.
The TSA said wait times for airport security remain low, and that on Wednesday it screened about 2.4 million people with an average wait time in standard screening of 6.28 minutes.
Many government agencies have posted banner messages on their websites blaming Democrats for the shutdown.
In 2019, during a 35-day shutdown, the number of absences by controllers and TSA officers rose as workers missed paychecks, extending checkpoint wait times at some airports. Authorities then were forced to slow air traffic in New York, which put pressure on lawmakers to quickly end the standoff.
(Reporting by David Shepardson, editing by Deepa Babington)
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