Week ahead: TSA returns to the hot seat

Lawmakers are returning to one of their favorite targets as they come back to Washington to hear the State of the Union address: the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

The day before President Obama gives his speech, the House Homeland Security will holding a hearing focused examining the TSA’s expenditure of $17.5 million on a “cadre of investigators.”

The chairman of the panel’s Transportation Security subcommittee, Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.), said the hearing  would “investigate a glaring problem within TSA that was exposed by a recent report from the [Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General].

“If TSA fails to appropriately classify its criminal investigators in the Office of Inspection to positions that are more consistent with their workload it could waste $17.5 million,” Hudson said in a statement. “This hearing will serve as a forum to examine the report and find ways to save taxpayer dollars while protecting the homeland.”

Officials with the TSA’s offices of Inspection, Human Capital and Audits are scheduled to testify before the panel.

Also on Tuesday, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will hold a hearing about “improving the effectiveness of the federal surface transportation safety grant programs.”

The big event of the week will come when President Obama delivers his fifth State of the Union address on Wednesday night.

Transportation advocates have expressed optimism that Obama will discuss increasing funding for road and transit as lawmakers are beginning to undertake a rewrite of the legislation that authorizes surface transportation projects.

The current transportation funding bill is scheduled to expire in September. The deadline coincides with a projected bankruptcy in the pot of money that is used to pay for transportation projects, the Highway Trust Fund.

The trust fund has traditionally been funded by the 18.4 cents per gallon federal gas tax, but lawmakers are searching for new potential funding sources because the gas tax brings in $20 billion less than the amount that is currently be spent on road and transit projects.