Tom Price: Why Is It So Hard to Drain the Swamp?

Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price has resigned, according to the White House after a series of reports uncovered expensive private flights billed to taxpayers for travel.

The investigation spearheaded by Politico uncovered about $1 million in taxpayer-funded private, charter, and military planes during the eight months of his time in office.

“I’m not happy, I can tell you,” Trump said.

Price tried to apologize for the flights, vowing not to do it again and even offering to refund taxpayers for some of the cost, but it was apparently not enough for the White House.

Trump told reporters that the White House would be putting a stop to cabinet officials traveling on private flights.

 

Why is it so hard to drain the swamp? Tom Price is a Donald Trump appointee. Trump came into office promising to drain the swamp, meaning to rid the federal government of abuse of power. How can this happen when President Trump’s own appointees partake in the very swamp they’re sworn to drain?

The problem is deeper than any one administration can solve. The problem is that the swamp is not the federal government; the swamp is “us”. By “us” I mean we, the people — or at least any among us who want the federal government to keep doing all of the things it does.

Consider everything the head of the Department of Health and Human Services is asked to do: take care of the poor; provide health insurance for virtually everybody; administer the impossibly insane Obamacare law; administer all of medical care for the elderly; take responsibility for every last drug that comes on the market; on and on and on. Are any of these things provided for in the Constitution? No. But most of us — Republicans and Democrats alike — expect and want the federal government to keep doing all of these things, and more.

When you give politicians — including Cabinet secretaries — trillions of dollars in other people’s money to do things not even implied by the U.S. Constitution, which called for limited government — then the swamp is what you get. It really doesn’t matter if Donald Trump is in office or Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Jeb Bush or anyone else. The fact remains that when you put human beings in charge of inconceivably large amounts of money that does not belong to them, and for which they are ultimately unaccountable, it will bring out the worst in even the best of people.

Sick of the swamp? Want to drain it? Then get rid of most of government as we know it. Or phase it out. Until or unless that happens, the scandals will not stop.

 

Dr. Hurd and Delaware Trump campaign coordinator Rob Arlett discuss this issue in their podcast HERE!

Follow Dr. Hurd on Facebook. Search under “Michael  Hurd” (Rehoboth Beach DE). Get up-to-the-minute postings, recommended articles and links, and engage in back-and-forth discussion with Dr. Hurd on topics of interest. Also follow Dr. Hurd on Twitter at @MichaelJHurd1