Tom Price resigned his post as secretary of health and human services because the president didn’t like the optics of his using taxpayer money to fly in private jets to venues easily accessible by commercial flights — or even by car. But plenty of others in the administration have exercised similar bad judgment and are still on the job.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin tried to commandeer a military plane for his honeymoon but was refused. However, he used a government plane to fly to Kentucky during the solar eclipse in August, with his wife in tow, ostensibly to visit Fort Knox. Mnuchin is worth nearly $400 million; if he wants to avoid commercial travel, he can afford to pay for private jets. That’s what Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos does. She owns her own plane, which she uses for official travel, and doesn’t charge the government a cent. Not so with Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, who is under investigation for chartering a private plane so he could fly from Las Vegas to his hometown in Montana and another one to fly between Caribbean islands to attend a ceremony honoring Denmark, even though commercial flights were available in both cases. And Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin took his wife along for a 10-day trip to Europe that included both government business and several days of sightseeing, with the taxpayers footing the bill for the secretary’s wife’s travel and per diem. Zinke and Shulkin are relative paupers among Trump’s Cabinet; Shulkin is worth about $17 million, and Zinke is worth just under $2 million. Forbes magazine estimates the Cabinet’s total net worth…
