Congress orders study on paying TSA workers for commute time
S. 1483 — TSA Commuting Fairness Act · Filed by Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) · Introduced Apr 10, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill directs the Transportation Security Administration to study whether TSA employees' commute time from parking lots and transit stops to their airport workstations should count as paid work hours. The study must examine feasibility, costs, and benefits across different airport sizes, with results due to Congress within 270 days. No immediate change to pay or benefits occurs; this is a research mandate only.
Why we flagged it
The bill is purely procedural—it orders a feasibility study on a single workforce benefit question. It contains no operative policy change, appropriation, or regulatory action. The study itself is the entire substance.
What the text implies
- If the study recommends paid commute time, implementation could increase TSA's annual labor costs by millions of dollars, potentially affecting airport security staffing levels or requiring budget reallocation.
- Treating commute time as on-duty hours for retirement calculations could significantly increase TSA's long-term pension liabilities, a cost not quantified in the bill itself.
- The study's scope is limited to TSA; if adopted, it may create pressure for similar benefits across other federal agencies with distributed workforces, multiplying fiscal impact.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
The bill itself imposes no cost or benefit on ordinary citizens—it is a study mandate with no immediate operational or fiscal effect. TSA employees would benefit if the study leads to paid commute time, but that is a narrow workforce benefit, not a public good. The study may inform future policy that could marginally affect airport security staffing or TSA operational costs (ultimately borne by taxpayers or airline passengers), but the bill creates no such policy itself.
Who stands to gain
- TSA employees (if study leads to paid commute time)
Named in the bill
Transportation Security Administration (TSA), TSA Administrator, House Committee on Homeland Security, Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, 49 U.S.C. § 40102 (airport hub definitions)
Where it stands
- Apr 10, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Apr 10, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
1 lobbying clients named this bill on 2 disclosure filings across 2 quarters, Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $840,426 in lobbying spend. A filing names 44 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 0% of bills with at least one filing.
Tammy Duckworth, the sponsor, reported $148,182 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- American Fed of Government Employees AFL-CIO — $840,426 on 2 filings
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 20, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (1,965 characters) on Sep 7, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,398 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-23.
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