A Father at the Game: What the Rubio Travel Story Leaves Out About the Rules

Every Saturday this fall, thousands of parents across America drove, flew or rode a bus to watch their sons play college football. One of them happens to be the secretary of state. That fact, and the airplane he is required to ride in, became a national story on Wednesday.

The Washington Post reported that Secretary of State Marco Rubio has attended at least 10 University of Florida games over the past two seasons, including five this fall, according to The Guardian's account of the Post story. The Post counted 23 trips to Gainesville on military aircraft, 15 of them personal in nature, and estimated the flights cost more than $1.2 million using published Defense Department hourly rates for military aircraft, The Guardian reported. Rubio's son is a senior walk-on running back for the Gators.

The Post also reported that Rubio and the State Department declined to say how much he has reimbursed the government, according to The Guardian. Two former officials told the Post that Rubio's predecessor, Antony Blinken, took personal trips on government aircraft only a couple of times a year.

Those are the facts as reported, and readers deserve to have them stated plainly. Here is what the coverage left in the fine print.

The secretary of state does not get to pick an airline and a middle seat. Assistant Secretary of State Dylan Johnson said Rubio is required to use military aircraft for secure communications and continuity-of-government reasons, The Guardian reported. The State Department told the Daily Wire the secretary must have access to secure communications at all times. The Guardian noted that Rubio is barred from flying commercially under security protocols that also cover the defense secretary and the directors of the FBI and CIA.

That arrangement is not a Rubio invention. The Office of Management and Budget's Circular A-126, the federal rulebook for government aircraft, recognizes required-use travel for officials whose trips must be on government planes because of "bona fide communications or security needs". The same circular spells out how taxpayers are repaid when such an official takes a wholly personal trip: the government is reimbursed the full coach fare for that trip.

In other words, the system Washington built decades ago assumes the nation's top security officials will sometimes travel for personal reasons, and it tells them exactly how to pay for it. Johnson said Rubio will continue to use government transportation and will reimburse the government for all personal travel.

The Post's number multiplies flight hours by the military's hourly operating rates, the Daily Wire noted, which makes it an estimate rather than an itemized bill. It measures what it costs to keep the secretary on a secure, connected aircraft, a cost taxpayers carry whether he spends his Saturday in Gainesville, at a church retreat or at a family wedding. Under the rule, the repayment for a personal trip is the price of a coach ticket, not the cost of the jet. Comparing the two and calling the gap a scandal is like billing a soldier for the Humvee he is ordered to ride in.

Even an ethics watchdog quoted in the coverage did not call it a violation. Cynthia Brown, senior ethics counsel at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, described the travel as more of an optics issue than a breach of the rules, though she said it merits scrutiny, The Guardian reported. Another ethics expert told the Daily Wire it would be hard to tell a father he cannot attend his son's game.

Critics have pointed to Rubio's own call, as a senator, for an inspector general review of Pete Buttigieg's use of government jets. But Buttigieg, as transportation secretary, was not a required user of military aircraft, Johnson said, and the secretary of state is. The Daily Wire also noted that a watchdog once put Rex Tillerson's domestic flights as secretary of state at more than $1 million.

Karoline Leavitt summed up the reaction of many parents online, saying the story simply confirmed that Rubio is a good dad, according to Twitchy.

There is one fair point in the coverage, and conservatives should not run from it: the public has not been told how much Rubio has repaid so far. The simplest way to end this story is to publish the reimbursement totals, trip by trip, the way the rules contemplate. Transparency is a conservative value, and in this case it would show the system working as designed.

The bigger picture is worth remembering. Rubio carries some of the heaviest burdens in government: a war with Iran, peace talks over Ukraine, a long contest with China. In the middle of all that, he keeps showing up for his son. In a culture that too often tells men their families come second to their careers, a father who makes it to the game is not a scandal. He is an example.

Expect Democrats, who take control of Congress in January, to ask for the travel records. If the State Department releases the reimbursement figures, the questions should get much simpler. Until then, the rule is clear: the secretary is required to fly secure, and required to repay the coach fare when the trip is personal.