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Yesterday we reported on President Trump’s unhappiness with Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, who spent (rather, wasted) taxpayer money traveling on private charted jets when commercial alternatives were available.
Asked by reporters if Price could be terminated from his post, Trump simply answered, “We’ll see.”Today, we’ve seen.
NBC News and other national sources are reporting that Price is out.
“Tom Price has resigned as President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary, the White House said Friday.
Price’s departure follows days of public outcry over his use of private jets to conduct government business, costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Trump alluded to the secretary’s fate as he departed the White House for Bedminster, New Jersey, calling Price a “fine man” but reiterating his displeasure about Price’s use of private jets for multiple trips on government business.
“I don’t like the optics,” Trump said.
The president previously said he was “not happy” with Price after news broke that he’d spent hundreds of thousands of federal dollars on private charters rather than flying commercial. He reiterated those sentiments Friday on the South Lawn of the White House.
On Thursday, Price said he would pay taxpayers back for his seat on the plane and promised to “take no more private charter flights as Secretary of HHS. No exceptions.”
An HHS spokeswoman told NBC News that Price would write a personal check to the U.S. Treasury in the amount of $51,887.31 — making good on his promise to pay for the “expenses of my travel on private charter planes” and ensuring tax payers don’t “pay a dime for my seat on those planes.”
“I regret the concerns this has raised regarding the use of taxpayer dollars,” Price said in a statement Thursday. “All of my political career I’ve fought for the taxpayers. It is clear to me that in this case, I was not sensitive enough to my concern for the taxpayer.”
Price is not the only member of the president’s Cabinet to come under fire for using a private jet for government travel. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt have also chartered jets on the taxpayer’s dime since the start of the Trump administration.”
Of course, in this context we all know what “resigned” means — “You’re fired!”
Can you begin to believe what’s going on in our federal government? People are actually being held accountable. They’re being forced to answer for their budgets, expenditures and results — and not just getting a rubber-stamped annual auto review and pay upgrade.It’s almost like somebody’s running Washington like a business.
[Note: This article was written by Derrick Wilburn, Founder and Chairman of the Rocky Mountain Black Conservatives, and a speaker, author, columnist and analyst for multiple print and broadcast media outlets. Follow him on Facebook, and at RMBlackConservatives.com]
