Airport travelers left $409,085.56 at security checkpoints across the country in 2010, simply by emptying the change in their pockets into those plastic bins and not picking it up again. The Transportation Security Administration says they collect all the unclaimed money in a jar that gets counted and sent to the finance office where it's added to the general operations fund. (John F. Kennedy Airport in New York collected the most money; about $47,000, including some foreign currency.) Republican House member Jeff Miller of Florida has proposed that they donate that money to the USO, implying that spending any more money on the TSA is a gigantic waste of taxpayer expense. Or maybe they could donate it to the airlines to cover checked bag fees.

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Dashiell Bennett