WASHINGTON, D.C., September 29, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – Tom Price, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, resigned today after backlash for traveling on government-funded private jets.
Price was a Congressman from Georgia before Trump nominated him to head the government department that oversees Medicare, Medicaid, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. HHS has a massive influence on American healthcare policy.
Price is strongly pro-life and pro-marriage.
He is the latest social conservative to be effectively purged from the Trump administration.
“Desperate to stop him from fulfilling the president's promises by reversing the policies of the previous administration on issues like abortion, conscience, and health care, the Left has turned up the fire on the Health and Human Services chief in the hopes of elbowing out one of the most pro-life members of Trump's cabinet,” Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council, wrote on September 28. Democrats “want nothing more than to oust one of the staunchest conservatives on Trump's team…Knowing Tom Price as I have, there's no doubt in my mind that he meticulously followed every rule. The department's legal team would have been consulted before he stepped foot on these charters. In the end, though, this isn't about Secretary Price's ethics, it's about trying to discredit one of the most effective social conservatives in Washington.”
Price came under fire after a Politico investigation found “the White House approved the use of military aircraft for multi-national trips … Price to Africa and Europe this spring, and to Asia in the summer, at a cost of more than $500,000 to taxpayers.”
He spent over $1 million on travel since May, according to Politico.
Trump said this afternoon that he’d be making a decision on Price’s future.
“Secretary of Health and Human Services Thomas Price offered his resignation earlier today and the President accepted,” spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said.
The White House issued a statement saying Price had resigned and Trump will make Don Wright, currently the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health Director of the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Acting Secretary.
Leftists on Twitter celebrated Price’s resignation, saying it was ironic that Price had a reputation as a hardcore fiscal conservative, only to then use so much government money.
Price had promised to reimburse taxpayers for some of his travel expenses.
“I regret the concerns this has raised regarding the use of taxpayer dollars,” he said in a September 28 statement.
The revelations about Price seem less shocking of a political scandal than the news that Jared Kushner used a private email server for some of his communications with the White House and Anthony Weiner’s 21-month prison sentence for sexting a minor. However, they coincided with the rollout of Trump’s new tax plan and make Price seem out-of-touch and like part of the “swamp” Trump promised to “drain.”
During the Obama administration, ABC’s Chicago affiliate uncovered a “fleet of luxury jets” funded by taxpayers and used to transport Obama administration officials around the world. It also transported “people who don't even work for the government,” ABC reported. The fleet was a “$100 million taxpayer-funded mission” that flew military officials’ wives and congressional staffers, among others.