Price has come under the most intense scrutiny — President Trump chastised him publicly Wednesday and suggested that his job was no longer secure — but lawmakers are also demanding probes of travel by Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. Pruitt has taken at least four noncommercial and military flights since mid-February, according to congressional oversight records, costing taxpayers more than $58,000, while Mnuchin is under investigation by the Treasury inspector general for his use of a government plane to visit Kentucky as well as one for a trip from New York City to Washington.
And a private plane chartered this summer by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, for a flight from Las Vegas to near his home in Montana, cost taxpayers $12,375, according to a department spokesman. Zinke also used private flights during a trip to the Virgin Islands.
[...] An HHS official said Thursday that Price would write a check for $51,887.31, which appears to cover the cost of his seat on chartered flights but not those of his staffers. Politico, which first reported on Price’s repeated use of chartered jets, has estimated the total expense of the trips exceeded $400,000 — and it reported early Thursday evening that his White House-approved flights on military planes to Africa, Europe and Asia cost more than $500,000.
Fire the lot of them. They are inept and overreaching APPRENTICES. In fact, they're fucking taxpayers royally, and are proving themselves reluctantly indifferent about paying up anything approaching full reimbursement. They are feeding their obscenely greedy wants, not anyone's needs (using that want/need distinction one particular Anoka County Board member seems enamored of using against non-Republicans).
Then add on a pinch of after-being-caught hypocrisy:
Although the secretary said in his statement that his private-charter travel was approved by legal and HHS officials, he added that he regretted “the concerns this has raised regarding the use of taxpayer dollars.”
“All of my political career I’ve fought for the taxpayers,” Price said. “It is clear to me that in this case, I was not sensitive enough to my concern for the taxpayer. I know as well as anyone that the American people want to know that their hard-earned dollars are being spent wisely by government officials.”
Who would ever believe that monstrous BS? It insults an electorate to say such garbage. Fools and knaves are sometimes overlapping sets of individuals; Price being in that overlap.
How about a little of that TV prime-time, "You're fired?"
It's due.
____________UPDATE____________
Phrased differently:
Strib: image source.
_________FURTHER UPDATE__________
The bastard's gone. Trump must have said, "You're resigned," since it's not called a firing by the mainstream press. This link, and,
The Republican House speaker, Paul Ryan, is praising Price, saying that the former Georgia congressman and House Budget Committee chairman is a "good man."
The top House Democrat, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, says Price should never have become health secretary because the country needs someone in the job "who believes in health care for all Americans."
Pelosi says President Donald Trump should pick a replacement who will stop the administration's sabotage of health care programs.
Pelosi, a foe of single payer (so far, wet finger to test the wind being likely), has no place staking any claim yet about "health care for all Americans." Is she abandoning the money that's been behind DC politics so tediously long; shifting to the only real choice, single payer?
Believe any such change if you see it. It seems vague blowing smoke from here. A Pelosi charm, over the years.
Ryan? It takes a good man to know a good man. Ryan?
More, same source:
On the Democratic side, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state says Price was always unacceptable for the job because of his "ideologically driven" views on health care, especially women's health. Murray says the Trump administration lets top officials "put themselves and partisan politics ahead of families."
Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden says Price "betrayed the agency's mission to improve Americans' health care." He says Price's replacement must implement federal health care laws and work to reduce prescription drug prices.
___
Former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price says he regrets that the controversy over his travel created a distraction for the Trump administration and its health overhaul agenda.
Price writes in his resignation letter to President Donald Trump: "I have spent 40 years both as a doctor and public servant putting people first."
He adds: "I regret that the recent events have created a distraction from these important objectives."
How do you like that, "recent events" brand? The creep lacks the courage to say "things I've wrongly done" and instead says "recent events" as if it is separate and apart from him and choices he's made to be self-serving beyond any decent degree. What a project! Sent to Congress by the same district that inflicted Newt Gingrich on the nation during Gingrich-Clinton years, back then, when DC was not even by a pinch corrupt. Eh?
___________FURTHER UPDATE___________
Shoveling it on; same source; good man Speaker Ryan:
Ryan says Price was a "leader in the House and a superb health secretary," and he credits Price for helping the House pass a health care bill earlier this year. That measure went nowhere in the Senate.
Yeah, and Dracula was a superb vampire. A leader of that ilk. A good vampire, one with sound family values and opposed to aggressive Islam.
____________FURHTER UPDATE______________
Mrs. DeVos? Well traveled? Frugally so? Soon the nation may know. Many have hopes about what facts will emerge.
About what outcome may ensue.