In the face of Janet Napolitano's terrifying claims that major airports were already seeing lines "150 to 200 percent as long as we would normally expect" as a result of the budget-crushing sequestration cuts that went into force on Friday, The Telegraph reports [3] that, in fact, LAX "haven't had any slowdowns." But how can that be? The government said it would all be horrible - and to think of the children... it appears Ms. Napolitano was speaking that dialect of English we call 'politician' as airports have 'received no reports of unusual security delays.' Unpossible. The DHS would not return calls questioning her exclamations that she "did not mean to scare, just inform," about LAX, O'Hare, and Atlanta's Hartfield-Jackson. This scare-mongery follows Maxine Waters' 170 million unemployed claim [4] and Arne Duncan's teachers already being laid off claims [5]. Trust, indeed.
Via The Telegraph [3],
Ms Napolitano said today that major airports were seeing lines "150 to 200 per cent as long as we would normally expect" as result of the federal spending cuts that went into force on Friday.
"We're already seeing the effects at some of the ports of entry, the big airports, for example. Some of them had very long lines this weekend," she told a breakfast event organised by Politico [6].
When pressed for specifics she cited Chicago's O'Hare, Atlanta's Hartfield-Jackson and Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), adding: "I don't mean to scare, I mean to inform."
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"We haven't had any slowdowns at all," said Marshall Lowe, a spokesman for LAX. Mr Lowe said that he had been on duty over the weekend and received no reports of unusual security delays.
DeAllous Smith, a spokesman for Hartfield-Jackson, said: "There have been no abnormally long lines at the security checkpoint nor unusual aircraft delays at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport as a result of sequestration."
Their comments were echoed by Karen Pride, the director of media relations at Chicago Department of Aviation, who described operations at O'Hare as "normal" with "no unusual delays or cancellations".
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The Obama administration has been repeatedly accused of exaggerating the impact of the $85 billion in cuts as it seeks to pressure Republicans in Congress into replacing them with a mixture of spending reductions and tax rises.
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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) did not immediately return a request for comment on Ms Napolitano's claim.
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Jean Medina, a spokeswoman for Airlines for America, the airline industry's trade group, also contradicted Ms Napolitano's claim. "We're not seeing any impact at the moment," Ms Medina said. "Our biggest problem this week is going to be weather rather than the sequester."
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"I haven't heard of anything like that at all," ...