Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA) said Thursday that his former colleague and current Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price “made a few errors” in spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on private flights.
An investigation by Politico last week uncovered the extensive private jet expenses, and since then the Health and Human Services inspector general, as well as the House Oversight Committee, have said they’re looking into the matter.
Price said Thursday that “I think we’ve still got the confidence of the President,” but Trump on Wednesday said “we’ll see” about Price’s future in his administration.
“Should Tom price be fired?” MSNBC’s Chris Jansing asked Brat during an interview Thursday.
“That’s above my pay grade,” Brat said. “I’m a lowly economics professor. The lawyers and the ethics people —”
Jansing interjected: “But does it bother you that somebody as a member of the Cabinet — where they said we’re going to drain the swamp — you have now multiple members who are flying private planes?”
“I don’t know the basic facts,” Brat responded. “I think Secretary Price himself says ‘I got the memo.’ I think he knows he made errors.”
“Up here, convenience and time is always of the essence,” Brat continued. “And so I think he made a few errors in making life a little too easy when the whole rest of the world is suffering to survive right now. And so we got the memo. The swamp needs to constantly be reminded that everybody’s working hard paycheck-to-paycheck out there, and we have to understand that on a daily basis. And when we forget that it’s at our peril.”
