mr. lajoye: yes sir.you noted, tsa for the first time ever exceeded all of our goals, our five goals for small business, and it is $576 million that was rewarded to small businesses. i cannot underscore how important small businesses were to our response to covid-19. whether it was hand sanitizer, a variety of ppe, small businesses played a very key role in our ability deploying plastic shielding throughout the airports. we cannot underscore how important they were in helping protect our officers and the traveling public. we want to expand on that success, we are working closely within dhs, snt, we are working closely with venture capital firms to find ways to solicit support from small businesses. how can we put our requirements out there to small businesses. broad agency announced it is really an opportunity for us to hear from small business, how can we develop their processes to meet the government's needs. we have a number of priorities where we will bite testing, we will abide demonstration units th

mr. lajoye. mr. lajoye, daily airport passenger volume is 50% of 2019 levels but it is also ten times greater than it was at this time last year, and the steady the se increases projected through the summer. we have heard concerns about whether tsa will have sufficient staffing due to this increased volume as well as fully onboarding challenges as result of our hiring freeze and the pandemic. this has raise questions that tsa readiness to support commercial air traffic transportation systems without modifying passenger screening protocol and compromising public safety. does tsa have sufficient staffing as passenger volume continues to increase, and how are we really sure no modification of procedures or threat detection capabilities will pose risk to passengers security? >> thank you, thank you for the question. what i want to say to the subcommittee is about this pandemic never once did we sacrifice security at any of the changes made to our procedures. that was something we established very, very ea

mr. lajoye. mr. lajoye, passenger airport volume is 50% of 2019 levels, but it is also ten times greater than it was at this time last year. and the steady increase is stafi projected through theng summer. we have heard concerns about voether tsa will have sufficient staffing due to this increased volume, as well as employee panm onboarding challenges as a this hiring freeze and commer theci pandemic. this has raised questions about tsa's readiness to support the commercial air transportation ot system withoutocol a modifying passenger screening protocols and compromising public safety. does tsa have sufficient how staffing as passenger volume continues to increase, and how will you ensure no modifications of procedures or threat detection capabilities will pose risk to passenger security? t >> thank you,he madam chair, foc that question. and what i want to say is ges m throughout this pandemic, never once did we sacrifice security r in any of the changes we made tt our procedures. to that was somethi