While I’m happy Tom Price resigned or was fired, it also shows the media and Democrat double standard when it comes to tax payers funding the air travel of cabinet members. Tom Price wasted about $400,000 on air travel before his resignation. Leon Panetta on the other hand squandered twice the amount $800,000, never resigned and was never held to account by the media. While Panetta was Defense Secretary for Obama in 2012, he would fly back home to his walnut farm in California every weekend. That cost about $800,000 yet got go coverage, no response from Obama and paid back a fraction of the reimbursement that he billed the tax payers.
Panetta’s weekly flight home to his California walnut farm were billed at $32,000 to the tax payers. Panetta paid back $632.
| Obama regime Leon Panetta charged taxpayers $800,000 – didn’t resign |
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In 2012, reports emerged that Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta had charged the taxpayers at least $800,000 dollars for flights home to California from Washington, DC, every weekend. He “billed the government $32,000 per private flight home,” the Atlantic noted at the time, but only reimbursed the taxpayers $632 per flight. While he “regretted” the cost, Panetta said that he had no intention of stopping the flights. And — in his defense — he was following the procedures required by law since the George W. Bush administration for Cabinet officials’ flights.
The use — or abuse — of government aircraft was not limited to Obama administration officials. In 2007, then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was found to have requested military aircraft for a variety of trips, at times insisting on a larger plane and military escorts. Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said later, after publishing documents related to Pelosi’s travel requests : “Speaker Pelosi treats the Air Force like her personal airline.”
That does not excuse waste by Trump administration officials, nor does it answer questions about potential conflicts of interests when they fly on private aircraft. But it does expose the hypocrisy of Democrats like Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA), who tweeted Thursday that Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price needed to “resign NOW” for merely reimbursing the government for the cost of taking commercial flights — exactly what Panetta had done.