PRIORITIES: Under their new collective bargaining agreement, Transportation Security Administration officers get to spend more taxpayer money on their uniforms every year than a United States Marine Corps lieutenant can spend in a lifetime.

“TSA employees will see their uniform allowances nearly double to $446 per year,” the House Transportation Committee noted in a press release on the TSA’s new collective bargaining agreement. “By comparison, a combat Marine Lieutenant receives a one-time uniform allowance of $400. The cost of the increase in TSA uniform allowance is an estimated $9.63 million annually.”

Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., faulted TSA for failing to streamline its bureaucracy or address criticism of security failures, such as the recent inspector general report on the failure to screen checked baggage at the airport in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The TSA should be abolished, and its functions privatized. For that matter, the entire Department of Homeland Security — whose creation, longtime readers will remember, I opposed in prescient terms — should be abolished, too.