Price promises to repay charter costs
Fighting to keep his job, health secretary Tom Price said Thursday he’d write a personal cheque to reimburse taxpayers for the cost of his travel on charter flights taken on government business and pledged to fly commercial going forward — “no exceptions.”
“I regret the concerns this has raised regarding the use of taxpayer dollars,” Price said in a statement. “I was not sensitive enough to my concern for the taxpayer.” His mea culpa came a day after a public rebuke from President Donald Trump.
The repayment — $51,887.31, according to Price’s office — was for the embattled secretary. Price did not address the overall cost of the flights, which could amount to several hundred thousand dollars.
Price, a former congressman from Georgia regarded as a conservative policy expert, said he hopes to keep his job. At the White House, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders wouldn’t go that far.
“We’re going to conduct a full review and we’ll see what happens,” Sanders told reporters. Travel by other Cabinet secretaries is also attracting scrutiny.
Price said all his travel was legally approved by the department he heads.
On Wednesday Trump declared that he’s “not happy” with his Health and Human Services secretary over reports that Price flew on costly charters when he could have taken cheaper commercial flights on government business. Asked whether he’d fire Price, Trump said, “We’ll see.”
Price told reporters Thursday, “I think we’ve still got the confidence of the president.” About the controversy, he said, “We’re going to work through this.”
In his statement, Price said taxpayers “won’t pay a dime for my seat on those planes.”
Price played a supporting role in the fruitless Republican effort to repeal Barack Obama’s health-care law — another source of frustration for the president.
Prompted partly by controversy over Price, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has launched a wide-ranging investigation into travel by Trump’s political appointees. On Wednesday the committee sent requests for detailed travel records to the White House and 24 departments and agencies, dating back to the president’s first day in office.