Traveling by Private Jet

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his leadership on this essential question of public integrity. I also want to salute my colleague from California (Mr. Ted Lieu), who has been a leading voice in demanding real financial accountability in the administration.

I want to underscore some of the things that my colleagues have said, Mr. Speaker. If there are any Americans out there who love to fly wherever they want, whenever they want, at taxpayer expense, then we have got the perfect job for you in President Trump's Cabinet. Now, of course, only billionaires and millionaires need apply for these jobs, but if you have a taste for fancy chartered air travel, paid for by hardworking Americans across the country, this is undoubtedly the job for you.

My friends, while millions of desperate Americans are suffering in the sweltering posthurricane conditions of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Florida, Texas, and Louisiana, we have got Cabinet Secretaries who should be doing everything in their power to save our people but are, instead, looking out for something far more important, apparently, than other Americans' mere survival. They are focused on their own first class, private charter, airplane flights to cushy destinations, paid for by hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money. We kid you not.

This comes out this week. It comes out that Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price is less interested in health and human services than he is in wealth and valet services. Despite the fact that he blasted the use of government-paid jet travel on CNBC just a few short years ago, he seems to have come down with a severe and chronic case of swamp fever, billing you and me and millions of other Americans for 26 customized, deluxe, premier, first class, private charter, plane flights at taxpayer expense, at an extraordinary estimated cost of more than $400,000. That is just one Cabinet Secretary.

Now, I can't blame him for one of the trips that he took in August to the beautiful and secluded St. Simons Island in southern Georgia, and another trip that enabled him to get to his condo in Nashville and to have lunch with his son. You can hardly blame him for wanting to get out of town and to see the family. After all, it was hot here in Washington, D.C., as climate change sets in across America and the world. But as we say on Capitol Hill: ``It's not the heat, it's the stupidity.''

And look at what our Secretary of Health and Human Services did, and here I will read from Politico, September 26, an article entitled ``Price's private-jet travels included visits with colleagues, lunch with son.''

``The HHS Secretary sometimes combined official travel and meetings with friends and family. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price took a government-funded private jet in August to get to St. Simons Island, an exclusive Georgia resort where he and his wife own land, a day and a half before he addressed a group of local doctors at a medical conference that he and his wife have long attended.

``The St. Simons Island trip was one of two taxpayer-funded flights on private jets in which Price traveled to places where he owns property, and paired official visits with meetings with longtime colleagues and family members. On June 6, HHS chartered a jet to fly Price to Nashville, Tennessee, where he owns a condominium and where his son resides. Price toured a medicine dispensary and spoke to a local health summit organized by a longtime friend. He also had lunch with his son. . . .

``An HHS official said both the Georgia and Tennessee trips were for official government business and were paid for by the Department.''

It is no problem getting out of town and going to see your family but, really, do the taxpayers have to pay for it?

If the taxpayers have to pay for trips like this, couldn't Secretary Price at least fly on first class commercial airplanes, rather than jacking up the taxpayers for tens of thousands of dollars to book a private airplane to do it?

Politico asked the same question. Here they said:

``Like some of the other 26 flights that Price took on corporate jets since May identified by a Politico review, the trip to Tennessee appears to have occurred despite the existence of multiple commercial flight options. The trip to Georgia, while less direct, also could have been accomplished with a routine connecting flight through Atlanta's busy international airport.

``On August 4, Price flew a Dassault Falcon 2000 twin jet from Raleigh, North Carolina, where he had given a speech to a flu vaccine manufacturer, to Brunswick Golden Isles Airport, which is about a half- hour drive from St. Simons Island. It was the same plane that had shuttled him between five States in four days, one that HHS had chartered through Classic Air Charter for more than $86,000, according to Federal contracts.

``The plane arrived in Brunswick at 4:02 p.m. the afternoon before the start of the two-day Medical Association of Georgia retreat and roughly 40 hours before Price addressed the group, according to airport records. . . .''

``At about the same time, there were connecting commercial flights from Raleigh to Brunswick via Atlanta that would have gotten Price to St. Simons Island that evening.''

My friends, you can go back and you can look. In all of these cases, for example, Secretary Price chartered a plane for $25,000 of government money from Dulles Airport to Philadelphia, a distance of a mere 135 miles. That charter flight left 5 minutes after a regular flight flew, commercial flight flew, from Dulles for a few hundred dollars. So he paid $25,000 and left several minutes later than he would have left had he just taken the commercial flight.

He also could have taken, of course, the Amtrak, which is what most people do when they are going to Philadelphia from the Washington area, for a mere $72. Even the first class Acela would have been around $200. He could have taken the British Airways--they go there--whose slogan is: ``To Fly. To Serve.'' I guess that is not quite right. Or he could have taken Southwest Airlines. Their slogan is: ``Low fares. Nothing to hide.'' I see that wouldn't have fit. Maybe JetBlue, ``You Above All.'' That could have worked.

But no, instead, he had to book the private jet and fly for $25,000 from here to Philadelphia.

Mr. Speaker, this is an old Washington story. The people who say they are coming to drain the swamp have become the swamp. And this is not something that affects just one Cabinet Secretary. Several Cabinet Secretaries are doing this, as my colleagues have pointed out.

With Secretary Price, who seems to be the captain of the swamp flyers; Secretary Pruitt, who is a frequent swamp flyer himself; and Secretary Mnuchin, another swamp flyer, we have a serious staph infection spreading throughout the Trump administration.

And why not, the President seems to have evolved a whole new model of government in the 21st century. Government is a money-making operation for specific families and specific tiny groups in the society. And that is the message that pervades the Trump administration today.

Mr. Speaker, we need to pass the SWAMP FLYERS Act, which is very simple. It says that those of us who have the honor and the privilege of coming to serve the American people here in Washington, D.C., should use regular commercial air flights unless it is a matter of national security, or unless there is not a commercial flight that will get them to where they need to go.

But the idea that you have Cabinet Secretaries who have already taken dozens of flights, paid for with hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars, of taxpayer money when a commercial flight would have done is an absolute scandal. Now, it hasn't gotten much attention yet because on the scale of the scandals we have seen in this administration, I agree, it is a relatively small one. But it is a dramatic and vivid illustration of what is going on here.

The people who said they were going to drain the swamp became the swamp. And now, the swamp pervades everything. Every Cabinet member, all of the Secretaries, the entire government is engulfed in this kind of corruption.

It begins right at the top, where President Trump has continued to collect hundreds of thousands, or millions, of dollars in foreign payments at the Trump Hotels, at the Trump office tower, and the Trump golf courses around the world from foreign governments, and has not once come to the U.S. Congress to ask for our permission and consent as is required by Article I, section 9, clause 8 of the Constitution, which forbids the collection of presents, emoluments, offices, and titles from foreign governments by anybody who serves under the United States, who holds an office under the United States.

This President is not only collecting rampant, extreme amounts of money through his businesses from foreign governments, he is not even asking us for our permission or our consent. We have got to pass the SWAMP FLYERS Act.

I commend Mr. Lieu for writing this immediately when the news broke about this rampant abuse of current regulations. We need to take a stand as a Congress on a bipartisan level. Unanimously, we can pass this to say that government officials should not be flying at taxpayer expense for dubious reasons. We should be using coach like everybody else, flying commercial like everybody else.

If you have got to fly first class, fine, fly first class, but fly commercial unless it is a matter of national security, or unless there is not a commercial flight that will get you there. Is that something that we can agree on, on a bipartisan basis?

I just want to say, earlier today we saw a magnificent example of real public service and public dedication by our distinguished colleague, Mr. Scalise, who has returned, thankfully, to this body. He demonstrates and embodies what is best in terms of public service.

Unfortunately, we have also seen in Washington this week the personification of what is the worst in public service. We have got to stop taking the American taxpayers for a ride.

Let's pass the SWAMP FLYERS Act immediately

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