Health secretary Tom Price resigns over travel uproar
WASHINGTON — Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price resigned Friday – hours after President Donald Trump told reporters he would decide soon whether to fire the Cabinet member for using private chartered jets on some 26 flights that cost taxpayers more than $400,000.
Price’s departure fit a pattern familiar in the Trump White House. As Politico led reporting on Price’s high flying habit, Trump let the press know he was unhappy with the HHS secretary. On his way to Marine 1 Friday, Trump told reporters that Price was “a very fine man” – the sort of praise he bestowed on other high profile supporters just before they got the axe.
In a statement issued shortly afterward, the White House said “Secretary of Health and Human Services Thomas Price offered his resignation earlier today and the president accepted.”
Price said in his resignation letter that he regretted that “recent events have created a distraction.”
Trump named Don Wright to serve as acting secretary. Wright is currently the deputy assistant secretary for health and director of the office of disease prevention and health promotion.
September was a cruel month for Price. Politico broke the story about his use of charter flights – and then reported on overseas travel on military planes that bumped the reputed price tag over $1 million.
It was hard to imagine how Price could survive a narrative that clashed so loudly with Trump’s “Drain the Swamp” mantra. News reports ran an old quote of a younger Price denouncing then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “flying over our country in a luxury jet.”
Price tries to sell his case
Price told Fox News on Thursday that he believed he retained the confidence of the president. But later in that interview, when Bret Baier pressed Price for flying private charters to cities easy to reach by commercial airlines, Price failed to sell his case.
“There was one flight to Philadelphia. You drive 45 minutes to Dulles, you get on a private flight to fly to Philadelphia for $25,000,” Baier said. “You take Amtrak, you could be there in an hour and half for about a hundred bucks.”
Price responded, “We had a meeting that morning on the hurricanes that I needed to be at and then we had a meeting in the afternoon at the White House.”
Price also said, “These were 10 trips and with 26 different legs. But we have a very ambitious agenda and we were trying our doggone best to accomplish the mission and make certain that we did all that we could do to advance the president’s agenda.”
Price also pledged to take no more private air charters “going forward” and noted his decision to reimburse taxpayers nearly $52,000 for the cost of his “seat on those planes.” Price also argued that his department’s legal department approved the travel.
Brad Blakeman, a Republican strategist and former aide to President George W. Bush, said it was wrong for Price to pass the buck to HHS attorneys. Private charters make sense for security reasons; also time constraints or a large entourage can make private air travel acceptable.
“It is not the proper thing to do when there are good alternatives,” Blakeman said.
Several congressional Republicans praised Price on Friday. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Friday that Price had worked hard to help that chamber pass its health-care plan before the GOP effort reached an impasse in the Senate. “I will always be grateful for Tom’s service to this country,” he said.
Democrats took an opposing view. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., tweeted, “Tom Price’s removal is just a symptom of the unethical behavior and abuse that pervades @realDonaldTrump’s administration.”
In a statement, Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., called on Price, a former GOP congressman from the Atlanta suburbs, to reimburse the Treasury for the full cost of his chartered trips.
“For the better part of a decade Congressman Tom Price justified ending health care programs like the Affordable Care Act as a way to cut costs,” Titus said. “Well, it is clear that when it came to his own actions, he wasn’t nearly so fiscally conservative.”
Other travel issues
High-price travel will remain an issue for this administration. An Inspector General has opened a probe into the use of an Air Force jet by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Mnuchin and his wife, actress Louise Linton, flew to Fort Knox, Kentucky, for what was described as official” business – after which the two were able to view the eclipse. A Treasury official told reporters Mnuchin routinely reimbursed the government for the cost of his wife’s travel.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke also chartered a flight from Las Vegas to Kalispell, Montana, at a cost of $12,375. A spokeswoman explained that feasible commercial flights were not available, and that Zinke had arrived in Las Vegas the day before on a Southwest flight.
In a speech to the Heritage Foundation, Zinke called the controversy “a little B.S.”
In addition, the Washington Post reported that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt had taken four noncommercial and military flights at a cost to taxpayers of more than $58,000. A spokesperson told the Post that department lawyers approved the travel.
“There is a value to the secretaries’ time,” and that can justify charter and military flights, said Mark Harkins, senior fellow at the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University. But members of Congress are going to scrutinize Cabinet travel and compare it to their commutes to their home districts.
Some of these abuses could lead Congress to pass laws that limit administration travel, perhaps excessively. “Will this rise to the GSA scandal in Las Vegas?” asked Harkins, referring to a conference in 2010 where hundreds of federal workers partied for four days at taxpayer expense. The Office of the Inspector General investigated and found a “general culture of wasteful spending.”
Said Harkins, “You’re never quite sure what the unintended consequences will be.”
Contact Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com or 202-662-7391. Follow @DebraJSaunders on Twitter.
