Abusing taxpayer money used to be a firing offense. Not in the Trump era. Top officials like Tom Price used to be humiliated and ousted for ethics violations like these. Now they're just following the example set at the top.

Cheri Jacobus | Opinion contributor

Show Caption Hide Caption Report: HHS Secretary Tom Price took private jets for work Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price is flying right into controversy with the use of 5 private jets for work trips just last week. Veuer's Nick Cardona (@nickcardona93) has that story.

In the 1990 Martin Scorsese film The Grifters, the con artists of the title sell out their own flesh and blood and seem ever so confident they can keep the con going. Up until recently, we’ve all had reason to be confident that despite other flaws, our elected officials and public servants keep watch on those who seem a bit too comfortable spending our hard-earned tax dollars on themselves.

"Mr. Watkins has resigned and the taxpayers will be fully reimbursed. The taxpayers will not be out one red cent.”

That was President Clinton in the spring of 1994 after David Watkins, the White House director of administration, used a presidential Marine One fleet helicopter to travel to a golf course near Frederick, Md., with another aide. They were hosting an administrator of Camp David.

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The local newspaper, The Frederick News-Post, published a seemingly innocuous photo of the government chopper at the golf course, complete with a Marine in dress uniform saluting as the party boarded with their clubs after hitting the links. No caption. No names. The “United States of America” was plastered as plain as day on the side of the craft.

As the press secretary to the local congressman, Republican Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, I obviously took note and immediately showed the odd photo to my boss. He fired off a letter to the White House, and we alerted news outlets and House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s office. We pushed until we extricated from an embarrassed White House the names of the individuals abusing their privilege and our coffers.

Watkins, who led the excursion and used the government chopper, was toast.

In a similar incident a few years earlier, White House Chief of Staff John Sununu was in the headlines for inappropriately running up travel bills on the taxpayers’ dime. Sununu was forced to reimburse the government several thousand dollars, and the kerfuffle contributed to his termination as top aide to President George H.W. Bush.

Both Republicans and Democrats took a strong stance against government officials being so blatantly cavalier about wasting our tax dollars on travel for personal trips, or when more economical methods of transport are readily available for business.

These Sununu and Watkins incidents led the headlines for days and live on in the history books and Wikipedia, so serious were the offenses in the eyes of presidents, Republicans, Democrats, the news media and the American people. The inadvertent role of the photographer for that small-town Frederick newspaper was so significant, it was mentioned in his 2010 obituary. Chances are one day, Sununu’s obit will include the ugly chapter of his forced resignation and temporary fall from grace.

Yet in the Trump administration, we routinely see the arrogance and abuse of this team of grifters.

Last week, Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price took private jets on five trips billed as “official travel,” though commercial air travel would have saved taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars. (His recent predecessors flew commercial when traveling domestically on official business.) This came on the heels of the jaw-dropping news that Trump’s Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, tried (and failed) to score a government plane for his European honeymoon. And now Politico reports that Price has taken at least 24 private flights costing $300,000.

While in Congress, Price was a vocal proponent of cutting wasteful spending, and he currently backs cutting his own agency’s budget by 18%. In a 2009 interview with CNBC now making the rounds, he attacked Democrats for trying to spend $550 million for eight private passenger jets. He wanted $0 for 0 planes.

The hypocrisy is thick. But not surprising.

Though Clinton fired a senior aide over misuse of taxpayer-funded travel, and Bush parted ways with his chief of staff in part due to a similar transgression, President Trump has become the poster boy for using and abusing our tax dollars for his personal travel and profit. Each of his trips to his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida is estimated to cost us $1 million to $3 million.

And much of the money goes to Trump himself. The government pays him to house his guests and entourage, and we can't forget the infamous $60,000 in golf cart rentals the Secret Service incurred to protect the president and his family at the resort in just the first eight months of the Trump presidency. That's $60,000 going to Trump, courtesy of We the Taxpayers.

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We pay so he can play and profit.

As senior level Trump administration officials (and perhaps those not so senior) see others skate by with nary a shrug of the shoulders when caught bilking taxpayers for their non-essential travel expenditures, and watch the grifter in chief spend our money as if it’s his own, expect more pillaging and plundering unless and until congressional leaders stand up for us and guard the piggy bank.

Spoiler Alert: In The Grifters, the con men and women destroy each other in the end.

Cheri Jacobus, a Republican consultant and commentator, is president of Capitol Strategies PR. Follow her on Twitter: @CheriJacobus.