Two former Health and Human Services secretaries told CNN on Wednesday that they mostly or exclusively flew commercial planes during their respective tenures, providing important context for the conduct of President Donald Trump’s health secretary Tom Price, who is under fire for his use of a private jet for government business.
Mike Leavitt, who served as HHS secretary from 2005 to 2009 under President George W. Bush, told CNN in an email that “most” of his travel when he was in that role was on commercial jets, with rare exceptions.
“Most of my travel was commercial except for periods when we were dealing with health emergencies,” Leavitt said.
Examples of when he did not fly commercial included, Leavitt said, “the period when we were dealing simultaneously with Katrina response, the breakdowns of the Medicare Part D (prescription drugs) implementation and an emerging pandemic threat where we were doing pandemic summits on each state.”
In those instances, Leavitt said he used an aircraft already under lease to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or planes leased from other agencies, and that congressional approval was obtained to use the CDC plane.
On occasion, when commercial flights were not available, Leavitt said he and his colleagues would travel through a non-commercial option if the economics of it could be “justified.”
“I never used private planes,” Donna Shalala, who served as HHS secretary under President Bill Clinton, told CNN. “In fact, I flew coach on commercial US planes.”
Price, a former Republican congressman, has drawn the ire of the public — and now the President himself — for revelations that he repeatedly used taxpayer-funded private planes for government business.
Politico first reported Price’s use of charter jets for official business earlier this month, and followed that article with another that said the secretary has traveled on charter flights at least 24 times since May, citing people familiar with his travel plans and a review of HHS documents.
Charter plane operators estimated 24 flights would have cost $300,000, Politico reported. Commercial trips would have cost thousands of dollars less.
HHS’s inspector general is investigating Price’s decision.
Trump said Wednesday that he is “not happy” about the news.
“I was looking into it and I will look into it. I will tell you personally, I’m not happy about it,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “I am not happy about it, I’m going to look at it. I let him know it.”
Asked Wednesday whether he would fire Price, Trump said: “We’ll see.”
