HHS Secretary Tom Price: $1 Million in Private Jet Travel
Self-described fiscal hawk Tom Price resigned after spending nearly $1 million in taxpayer-funded private jet flights — some covering distances as short as DC to Philadelphia. He offered to reimburse only $52,000.
HHS Secretary Tom Price — a former congressman known as a fiscal conservative — resigned on September 29, 2017 after revelations that he had taken at least 24 charter flights for official business since May 2017, costing taxpayers nearly $1 million ($400,000 in private charters plus $500,000 in military aircraft).
Some flights covered distances as short as Washington to Philadelphia, where commercial flights and train service are readily available. When caught, Price offered to repay approximately $52,000 — the cost of "his seat" on the chartered planes, or roughly 5% of the total taxpayer cost. The insulting offer further enraged Trump.
The HHS Inspector General later confirmed Price violated government travel rules and wasted at least $341,000. He served just 231 days — the shortest-serving HHS Secretary in history at that time.
Price's tenure set the tone for the Trump cabinet: officials who preached fiscal responsibility in public while treating taxpayer money as a personal slush fund in private.