These Are The Top 5 Worst Post-9/11 Pieces of Legislation

by Kitty Testa

I know a lot of people are feeling patriotic and sad today, thinking of the horrors of September 11, 2001.  For those of us that experienced 9/11 as a nation, that’s understandable. It was a really bad day. And as when anything goes wrong, somebody inevitably says, “There ought to be a law…” So Congress, in their infinite lack of wisdom, gave us several new laws and new federal bureaucracies to make us feel safe, and gave away billions of taxpayer dollars as well.

Here are the five worst pieces of legislation from the aftermath of 9/11.

1. The Airline Bailout 

A week after the 9/11 attacks, the Senate approved a pre-emptive bailout of the already struggling airline industry to tide them over until air traffic returned to normal. As with nearly every good intention by Big Government, the bailout provided funds to aviation companies that didn’t even have any planes.  Senator Peter Fitzgerald (R-IL) was the lone senator who refused to vote for this $15 billion boondoggle, asking, “Who will bailout out the American taxpayer?” United Airlines, which received $5 billion directly, is based in Illinois, and Senator Fitzgerald found himself persona non grata with the Illinois GOP when he came up for reelection. The GOP instead nominated Jack Ryan, but then forced him out of the race due to past marital problems revealed when his previously sealed divorce from actress Jeri Ryan. This gave none other than Barack Obama a clear shot into the Illinois senate, where he served less than one term before winning the presidency in 2008.

2. The September 11^th Victim Compensation Fund of 2001

Really, I’m not hard-hearted when it comes to victims of 9/11, but many of the families became quite wealthy. In addition to billions of dollars raised for the victims of 9/11 from sympathetic countrymen, the Congress established this $7 billion fund to prevent victims from suing the airlines. The families of those who died each received $2 million, while those who were merely injured received about $400,000 on average from the government fund. In 2004, the Rand Corporation released a study proclaiming that 9/11 victims and their families were paid more than $38 billion.

3. The Homeland Security Act

Because Americans can’t fathom the concept that some things are not preventable, the attacks of 9/11 were blamed on competing intelligence agencies jealously guarding their intel and otherwise having no means of properly sharing information. So government does what government does best and made more government. In November 2002 the Homeland Security Act gave birth to the Department of Homeland Security to oversee competing departments and make sure that they played well with others.  Not only is the DHS supposed to protect us from terrorists, but also natural disasters. The DHS budget for 2016 was $64.9 billion. Ouch.

4. The Aviation and Transportation Security Act

The TSA is another child of the HSA and was born to federalize airline security. Prior to 9/11, private companies handled airline security, and other than the 9/11 attacks, we hadn’t had a whole lot of incidents in the friendly skies.  The TSA has given us complicated and frustrating security theater which doesn’t really do anything to decrease terror.  These measures only give us the illusion of increased security. The TSA budget for 2015 was $7.6 billion.

5.Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001

You know it as The Patriot Act, but its real name is a mouthful of loaded language. This piece of legislation allows the federal government and its agencies to actively monitor your phone calls, emails, financial transactions and travel, and established “sneak and peak” warrants in which the warrant was served after the actual search, all in the name of preventing terrorism.  When originally passed, the Patriot Act had sunset provisions with portions set to expire in 2005, but these have been extended by Congress and by President Obama.

All these years later, we really don’t know if any of these measures have really made us any safer, but we do know for certain they have made us poorer, and less free.