Alcohol & Tobacco Tax & Trade Bureau remains mostly shuttered. While taxpayers can continue to file electronic payments and returns for federal excise taxes and operational reports through https://www.pay.gov/paygov/ as well as access TTB’s eGovernment applications, including Permits Online, Formulas Online and COLAs Online, submissions will not be reviewed or approved until appropriations are enacted.
How long will the partial government shutdown – now in its 16th day – continue? No one knows. Based on the Sunday morning talk shows, Democrats appear to be assuming that many TSA workers who do screening at airports will stop working if they aren’t paid on Thursday. That, in turn, they say, will lead to severe disruption of air travel and force President Trump to give up on his demand for a “wall.”
That may be. But we wouldn’t bet on it. More likely, we think, is that Trump would simply declare a national emergency and order the military – active, Reserve and National Guard personnel – to provide the screening services currently provided by TSA workers.
It happened at least once before, in 1970. It was the largest wildcat strike in U.S. history. It was focused on the New York City post office. At the time, half of the entire world’s mail volume passed through New York City. After appeals to the letter carriers to return to work, and amid fears the stock market would have to close, President Nixon issued Proclamation 3972, which declared a national emergency and authorized military control over the post office.
At its peak, Operation Graphic Hand involved more than 18,500 military personnel from the regular Army, Army Reserve, National Guard, Air National Guard, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps Reserve. The strike ended after eight days. Not a single worker was fired, and the Nixon Administration continued to negotiate with postal unions. The strike led to the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, which transformed the U.S. Post Office Department into the U.S. Postal Service, and granted postal workers full collective bargaining rights, but not the right to strike.
We think Trump would move quickly to do the same thing if TSA walkouts imperiled air travel. TSA has just 47,000 Transportation Security Officers. There are about 1.3 million active duty military and more than 800,000 reserve forces, so there are plenty of military people who could replace TSA screeners.
But President Trump could also simply take the position that President Ronald Reagan did when 11,359 air traffic controllers walked off the job in 1981. He ordered them to return to work. When they didn’t, Reagan simply fired the air traffic controllers and banned them from ever being rehired by the Federal Aviation Administration.