Hello, American taxpayers! Tom Price was forced to resign due to public pressure after reports he blew through more than $1 million of taxpayer funds by taking private chartered flights to places like Aspen where he had a meeting with the Koch alliance, his vacation property in St. Simon Island, Georgia, etc.
Price isn’t the only member of Trump’s cabinet with a taste for expensive private flights. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, EPA chief Scott Pruitt, Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin, Energy Secretary Rick Perry—all seem to have a taste for private jet travel, entirely funded by U.S. taxpayers.
And last, but not least, there is Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, who keeps finding himself doing “government business” in places where his largest donors, gas and oil industry executives, conservative organizations and Republican fundraisers also happen to be taking place.
Incredibly, we, the taxpayers, paid more than $12,000 to a charter a private plane from a Big Oil executive to whisk Zinke from Las Vegas, where he was giving a motivational speech to a professional hockey team owned by Zinke’s largest donor, to his home in Montana for one night. Zinke is working hard to open up gas and oil drilling in our national parks and other federal lands, to enrich a handful of gas and oil millionaires and billionaires, and we still got stuck with that bill.
Now it seems we also paid for Secretary Zinke to hop around the Caribbean so he could be the star guest at a GOP fundraiser. From Politico:
Zinke visited the Virgin Islands from March 30 to April 1 on an official trip related to the Interior Department’s role overseeing the U.S. territory. On his first day, following a “veterans meet and greet” and a reception with Gov. Kenneth Mapp, he appeared in his personal capacity at a March fundraiser for the local Republican Party at the patio bar of the Club Comanche Hotel St. Croix, department records show.
Tickets for the fundraiser ranged from $75 per person to as much as $5,000 per couple to be an event “Patron,” according to Zinke's official calendar and a copy of the invitation. Patrons and members of the host committee, who paid $1,500 per couple, could get a photo with Zinke at the start of the event, which was attended by local party members and elected officials.
The following day, Zinke took a $3,150 flight on a private plane, paid for by the department, from St. Croix to official functions on St. Thomas and returned later that evening. Interior Department officials said there was no other way to accommodate his schedule, which included official events on both islands commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Dutch government transferring control of the islands to the United States.
There was just no other way to get there! For what it’s worth, I selected a random date and searched for roundtrip flights from St. Croix to St. Thomas and here was the result:
That’s right. A plethora of $69 roundtrip fares between St. Croix and St. Thomas. And we paid $3,150. In July, he hopped around Colorado to meet with and speak to several conservative organizations. In an ethical world, Zinke and the Republican National Committee would reimburse taxpayers for travel to political events.
"Some of this travel is clearly political and that part of the travel should have been paid for by the RNC, NRCC, state political parties, a campaign committee or Zinke personally," said Daniel Stevens, executive director of the Campaign for Accountability.
For now it appears the Trump administration and his cabinet members are content to burn through taxpayer funds by slipping in an official speech here or there to justify travel to clearly political events. Like taxes, accountability and ethics are for the little guy.
