NPR. This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Ricky Mulvey. And I'm Whalen Wong.

Chaos continues at the airports as a significant number of TSA workers aren't showing up for work.

As we know,

they've not been paid for more than a month now. Congress is still at an impasse on funding

the Department of Homeland Security, and that's left these federal workers in the lurch.

We've all heard this before. Late last year, TSA workers also went without pay because of a

government shutdown. Here's what you may not know.

Every time you buy a ticket for a flight that leaves a U.S. airport, you pay something called

a U.S. passenger security fee, a little over $11 for round-trip tickets.

It's a tax that was supposed to help fund TSA salaries.

Travelers are still buying tickets and paying this fee.

The money is coming in.

But TSA workers aren't getting paid for now. So what gives?

Exactly. Answer that question, politicians. Answer that question.

That's Angela Grana, a TSA worker in Colorado.

You are the only ones that can answer that question. I'm just a simple servant wanting to do my job.

We deserve to have a paycheck.

This is taxi remarking gone a ride.

We'll talk about what happened, the economic consequences,

and the very personal financial effects after the break.

Where we are today goes back more than 20 years. Right after 9-11, Congress created the

Transportation Security Administration, the TSA. But a new federal agency with thousands of employees

...