Cabinet officials waste money. Who cares?

The high cost of government travel is not a scandal

Scott Pruitt.
(Image credit: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

As a self-described crusader against the Environmental Protection Agency's "activist agenda," Scott Pruitt should probably not be in charge of safeguarding America's natural resources. But does anybody really care that it cost some $68,000 for the EPA chief to ride around on airplanes and stay in hotels with a hand-picked assortment of flunkies and a Secret Service detail?

Did The Washington Post also write stories like this when Gina McCarthy and Lisa Jackson, Pruitt's predecessors in the Obama administration, were spending eight times as much on the same kind of dopey travel? Does it put things into perspective to have it pointed out that Hillary Clinton's recent visit to India, where she gloated about the economic devastation of Middle America in front of a paying audience, cost taxpayers $22,000 because despite multiple seven-figure advances for ghostwritten memoirs and gazillions of dollars in speaking fees (it helps when you charge college students hundreds of dollars for nose-bleed seats during your book tour) and Bill's successful fleecing of every tycoon and dictator from China to Peru, she still demands free Secret Service protection?

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Matthew Walther

Matthew Walther is a national correspondent at The Week. His work has also appeared in First Things, The Spectator of London, The Catholic Herald, National Review, and other publications. He is currently writing a biography of the Rev. Montague Summers. He is also a Robert Novak Journalism Fellow.