A system and method of removing items from a transmission scheduler queue includes assigning a latency count to each item indicating latency, i.e. time the item has remained in the system before being transmitted, adding a number of frames that have elapsed since a previous scheduler run to the latency count at each scheduler run to obtain a current latency count, comparing the current latency count to a removal period, which may be predetermined once or recalculated in each scheduler run, and removing the item if the comparison indicates that the current latency count exceeds the removal period before the item has been output from the queue.