Richard Hudson: “I thank the gentleman for his work on this important piece of legislation. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R.…”

“I thank the gentleman for his work on this important piece of legislation. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 4803, the TSA Office of Inspection Accountability Act of 2014. Again, I would like to commend the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Sanford) for developing this commonsense bill, which increases accountability within TSA and saves precious taxpayer dollars by requiring the agency to correctly designate criminal investigators within the Office of Inspection. According to the Department of Homeland Security inspector general, TSA does not ensure that its criminal investigators in the Office of Inspection are meeting the Federal workload requirements for law enforcement officers, even though they are considered law enforcement officers and are receiving premium pay and other benefits. If nothing is done to correct this problem, the misclassification will cost taxpayers roughly $17 million over the next 5 years. This type of waste is simply unacceptable. As chairman of the Subcommittee on Transportation Security, I held a hearing on this topic and was both surprised and encouraged to hear the head of the Office of Inspection admit that his office would reduce the number of criminal investigator positions based on the office's workload. Although an acknowledgement is a step in the right direction, TSA needs to go one step further.…”