Bloomberg reports that Tom Price's post-Cabinet career has begun:
Jackson Healthcare, a Georgia-based provider of health-care staffing and technology services, said on Tuesday that the former cabinet secretary and Georgia congressman had joined the company's advisory board….
Jackson Healthcare counts former Florida Governor Jeb Bush among its advisory board members. Price will bring unparalleled knowledge of the U.S. health-care system to the new post, Jackson Healthcare Chief Executive Officer Richard Jackson said in a press release.
Price stepped down from HHS job last September, amid probes of his use of taxpayer-funded jets while in office – and after unsuccessful Senate attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Price was a leading critic of the Obama administration’s central accomplishment.
Price's new linkage with Rick Jackson, CEO of Jackson Healthcare, is locally significant. From a 2015 piece in the AJC:
Jackson's stature in political and business circles is no secret. His family made political donations of about $50,000 each to Deal's and Cagle's re-election campaigns. He is among the biggest donors in Georgia to a Super PAC supporting presidential hopeful Jeb Bush. Jackson gave $500,000 and another $550,000 from Jackson Healthcare. A signed photo of the former Florida governor, who for a time served on the Jackson Healthcare Advisory Board, sits outside Jackson's office.
According to filings with what was once known as the state ethics commission, as of last year, Jackson had written at least $17,000 in checks to Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle’s Republican campaign for governor.
Jackson, who spent six years in foster care, has also been an advocate for the privatization of Georgia's foster care system. Here's some video of some testimony he gave in 2014:
Last night, we posted a column on Cagle's move to add the contents of House Bill 359, an attempt to create a temporary, non-governmental alternative to foster care, to HB 159, the larger attempt to rewrite Georgia's adoption laws. Jackson is a supporter of HB 359.
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A spokesman for House Speaker David Ralston reports that, due to frozen roads across the metro Area, joint Senate-House appropriations hearings have been cancelled today. House offices will delay opening until 10 a.m.
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Georgia Power is set to refund its customers about $43.6 million. The Public Service Commission announced the refunds on Tuesday, saying the utility exceeded a 12 percent return on equity cap in 2016. The commission said for any income exceeding that level, the utility is required to return two-thirds of it to customers. The commission earlier required Georgia Power to give its customers $75 in refunds as part of its agreement to allow construction of Plant Vogtle's two nuclear reactors to go forward. Georgia Power was also ordered to file a report by Feb. 20 about what impact the corporate income tax rate to 21 percent will have on its revenues.
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The fallout for U.S. Sen. David Perdue continues. Someone with a knowledge of how Google works has targeted the Georgia Republican for his shifting account of a White House meeting in which President Donald Trump described the homelands of African and Haitian immigrants with vulgarities.
Trump and Senate colleague Tom Cotton, R-Ark., at first said they couldn’t remember the remarks – then on Sunday, the Georgia said the president never uttered the words attributed to him.
The Washington Examiner reported Tuesday that Google searches on Perdue's name prompted a biographical file in which the Georgia senator was described as "lying, unscrupulous politician." The insertion has since been eliminated.
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This was of no help to Perdue on Tuesday. From the Associated Press:
Republicans are struggling to get their stories straight as President Donald Trump's Homeland Security secretary became the latest GOP official to offer an inconclusive version of a meeting in which Trump is said to have used vulgar remarks that have been criticized as racist.
Democrats accused Republicans of selective amnesia as Cabinet member Kirstjen Nielsen testified Tuesday under oath that she "did not hear" Trump use a certain vulgarity to describe African countries. "It was a meeting of 12 people. There was cross-talk," she explained at a congressional hearing, but she didn't "dispute the president was using tough language."
Under persistent questioning, Nielsen said she didn't recall the specific language used by Trump.
"What I was struck with frankly, as I'm sure you were as well, was just the general profanity used in the room by almost everyone."
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That federal shutdown that we celebrated as impossible late last year edges closer by the hour. Also from the Associated Press:
Disgruntled conservatives threatened late Tuesday to scuttle Republican leaders' plans to prevent a weekend government shutdown, saying GOP leaders now lack the votes to push their proposal through the House. The setback came as a deal between President Donald Trump and Congress to protect young immigrants from deportation also remained distant.
The intransigence by the House Freedom Caucus came as Republican leaders raced against a Friday deadline for pushing a short-term spending bill through Congress. If they fail, federal agencies would start shutting their doors over the weekend — an election-year debacle that GOP leaders and many Democrats are eager to avoid for fear of alienating voters.
The leader of the hard-right Freedom Caucus emerged from a Tuesday night meeting to say its members — and other GOP lawmakers as well — want a short-term bill keeping federal agencies open to contain added money for the military.
