tom price has recently been in the news for his flagrant use of private and military jets. He used this expensive air travel to run him and his wife all over the world in relative luxury. He was forced to resign yesterday by Donald Trump. It appears that Donald thinks Tom was mucking up the lens with which the world views him. Evidently, it’s about the “optics.” That is how Trump referred to it.

The high cost of a spin doctor with 'reasonable precaution'

Tom made several of these flights. Many of them were said to be from areas accessible by train or car.

Low-cost commercial airline service is often available for such trips. Price’s spokesperson defended his use of private jets as a “reasonable precaution,” since, in one instance, Price was unable to attend an important meeting because his commercial flight was canceled.

It was noted by Politico, though, that that particular flight was canceled because all air travel had been shut down in that region during that time period. In other words, that was an exception, not a rule. Price knew it and likely had his spin doctor twist it around. I tell you though, with this administration, nothing surprises me anymore.

The high price tag on Tom Price and The Trump White House

Tom Price is a millionaire. He is worth an estimated $13 million.

He went to school to be a doctor. If he was a humanitarian, he still would be. I think that he decided there was more money in politics. A tally of his mere ten months as Secretary of Health and Human Services tells that very tale.

In May of this year, Price flew him and his wife to Africa on a Gulfstream C-37B. It was a 30-hour trip.

The price tag of said trip was $311,418.25. To put that into perspective, it was over $1000 for every hour of flight time.

The cost that single flight was almost 50% as much as the $663,000 cut to HHS that was proposed in June 2017, and which Tom Price defended. The excision was to come from the HHS travel budget of $4.9 million.

Tom Price has, as we all now know, in ten months, spent a million dollars on that budget. One wonders if he was not appointed by Donald Trump, for his part, to bankrupt the HHS. When confronted on the subject, Price gave a weak apology and backed it up with an agreement to repay just $51.887 of the 1 million that he spent. Remember I said that Tom Price has 13 million of his own money?

I think it is well established that Tom Price, like so many in the Trump White House, is a wealthy man who frivolously wasted a million dollars of taxpayer money, and doesn’t plan on repaying it. I also think the same will eventually be said for Mnuchin and probably many more of the current White House staff. Donald Trump has clearly spent an exorbitant amount of time vacationing and playing golf on the taxpayer's dime. Does anyone care to speculate how much that is going to cost us taxpayers?
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