What is it with the Trump administration and spending tax dollars on things that are literal luxuries? Tom Price, Secretary of Health and Human Services, just got busted spending taxpayer dollars traveling on private planes – something to the tune of $300,000 already. Private travel on the taxpayers’ dime is apparently the norm for Price – he’s been doing this since he took the helm over at HHS.
According to a report from Politico, Kathleen Sebelius and Sylvia Burwell, both of whom headed up HHS under Obama, tended to travel on commercial airlines when flying domestically. Price’s officials claim that he only uses private jets when commercial travel isn’t feasible, but most of these flights are between big U.S. cities where many airlines regularly fly. For instance, he took a private jet from Washington, D.C., to Nashville, but there are four nonstop flights per day between those two cities, with fares as low as $202.
Even if he insisted on flying first class, that flight would have been considerably cheaper with average ticket prices around $1,000. His private jet from D.C. to Nashville cost $17,760.
Most of his flights are to areas where he speaks about the opioid epidemic, and these engagements are planned well in advance so he could book his flights well in advance, too. It’s not like most of his travel is at the last minute due to the nature of his job, or his “demanding schedule,” which is another excuse HHS officials are using.
His spokespeople also claimed that he was taking private jets because he was just so amazingly busy directing recovery efforts in the hurricane-ravaged areas of Texas and Florida. However, Politico says that at least 17 of these private flights happened before Hurricane Harvey. There’s no way he could possibly have been needed for recovery efforts for a hurricane that hadn’t happened yet.
One of those flights was from San Diego to the Aspen Ideas Festival in June. That’s a swanky festival in the swanky resort town of Aspen, CO, and he spent taxpayer dollars on that. While it’s true that he was speaking during a panel there, he arrived 19 hours before that panel, so it’s really hard for him to claim that he had to book a private jet because this was too last minute. An average of 26 percent of the flights that go into Aspen are scheduled commercial – it’s not like it’s impossible to fly commercial into Aspen-Pitkin. Price’s plane could have cost us as much as $7,100. Commercial flights cost well under half that.
This administration is all about wasting taxpayer dollars, but cutting needed spending, while pretending to stand for regular Americans. It’s absolutely sickening.
Featured image via Chris Kleponis – Pool/Getty Images
