Former Georgia congressman and cabinet secretary Tom Price wasted $341,000 in government money, according to an audit. It’s unclear what happens next. Price has already repaid a fraction of that amount.
Former Rep. Price left his seat in Congress, representing Fulton and DeKalb counties, to become President Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services. His tenure was breathtakingly brief, after it emerged that he was a prolific user of expensive chartered aircraft.
The audit shows that over seven months, Secretary Price took a dozen chartered private aircraft on trips to some two dozen cities spanning the continental United States.
It shows one particular chartered flight from Seattle to Washington DC cost the government $121,500. It also shows that Price’s office chose that flight over another charter that “only” cost $75,829. The audit shows a commercial flight would have cost approximately $2490.
“From the documentation the Office of the Secretary provided, we found no evidence that it considered commercial aircraft as an option for the flight from Seattle to DC,” the audit says.
Price repaid the government $12,150 for that flight. The audit concludes he wasted $106,860 on that flight alone. 12 others drove his charter flight spending described in the audit as “waste” to $333,014. The audit cites additional "waste" of government money on military and other air travel.
Price has repaid a total of $51,887 for chartered flights, and about eight thousand more for other overages.
Read the audit here.
"I remember him being very critical of others who he perceived as being wasteful of the taxpayers’ dollars," said former state Rep. Doug Teper, a Democrat who served in the Georgia legislature with the Republican Price. Teper, now a political science instructor at Georgia State University, says lobbyists frequently paid for free travel when they were lawmakers – but the rules have tightened since then. "A lot of these guys lose sight of what some of us would call common sense" when offered freebies, Teper said.
Price has been seen around his old congressional district since leaving Washington – but has stayed quiet about the scandal leading to his abrupt departure from President Trump’s cabinet in September 2017.
Tom Price is married to state Rep. Betty Price – who beat another Republican in a primary in May. She faces a Democrat in November. We contacted her office for comment from her husband but haven’t heard back.
