Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price resigned under pressure from President Donald Trump in September 2017 after spending more than $400,000 in travel bills for chartered flights and undercutting Trump’s “promise to drain the swamp of a corrupt and entitled capital,” the New York Times reported.
Price’s extravagant spending on travel, The Times said, “ran afoul of one of the president’s most consequential campaign pledges.”
The Times reported that Trump was already displeased with Price because he had failed to “repeal and replace” President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.
Obamacare had improved the lives of tens of millions of people.
Trump, who is pro-life, doesn’t care about other people’s lives – as we learned during the coronavirus epidemic.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9115435/
Fox News reported that Price, a physician who served six terms as a congressman in Georgia, flew on chartered jets the previous week to go to community centers in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire. The trip from Washington D.C. to Philadelphia is 135 miles.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hhs-secretary-tom-price-resigns-over-private-plane-trips
In addition, Politico said, he used military aircraft to go to Africa and Europe and to Asia. The cost for these trips to taxpayers was estimated at more than $500,000.
Politico said that the total cost of Price’s traveling came to about $1 million over the seven months he was secretary.
These trips and others included his wife.
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/28/tom-price-military-jets-europe-asia-hhs-243276
Price said he would reimburse the government some of the expense – about $52 thousand, or a fraction of the total cost, Fox News reported.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hhs-secretary-tom-price-resigns-over-private-plane-trips
During confirmation hearings, Democrats criticized Price for, among other things, owning $100 thousand in pharmaceutical and medical stocks.
By the time of Price’s resignation, the Trump Administration already seen a loss of many important staff positions.
“Trump has fired or lost a chief of staff, a chief strategist, a national security adviser, a press secretary, two communications directors, a deputy chief of staff, a deputy national security adviser, the F.B.I. director and numerous other aides and advisers,” the New York Times reported.
When Trump hosted The Apprentice, contestants stayed on the air for at least a week.
In addition, the smell of swamp gas had not just affected Price.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke used a chartered airplane for several flights to give a speech celebrating a new pro hockey team in Las Vegas. Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, spent about $60 thousand in taxpayer money on military plans. David Shulkin, the Veterans Affairs Secretary, took his wife on a 10-day trip to Europe that combined business meetings and sightseeing, the Washington Post reported.
