Rise In Fuel And Food Prices Affects Pentagon

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
CNN
June 18, 2008 Issue Number One (CNN), 12:00 PM
ALI VELSHI: Well, you're going to love this story. You all probably have an idea of what you spend on gas and food every month. Hopefully it's a simple family budget. But what if you had a food and fuel budget for your entire company? And what if that company was nearly three times the size of Wal-Mart, IBM and ExxonMobil combined? CNN's Barbara Starr has the story.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) BARBARA STARR: If you think your gas and grocery bill is high, meet Tina Jonas. She spends $15 billion a year on fuel and $3 billion a year on food.
TINA JONAS, PENTAGON CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER: It's pretty hectic around here.
STARR: Jonas manages the Pentagon's $600 billion budget.
JONAS: If we were a country on earth, we'd be about the 17th largest economy in the world.
STARR: She likes to point out that the Pentagon's budget woes are just like everybody else's, running out of money in a world of rising prices. The U.S. military is the single largest consumer of fuel in the country, perhaps the world -- 122 million barrels a year.
JONAS: We need another $3.5 billion of fuel money just to get through the year. We're going to need another $1 billion to finance our food bill.
STARR: And why is that?
JONAS: Well, transportation's driving a lot of it. The cost of wheat and corn and other things have gone up.
STARR: From her desk, or what she calls her dash board, Jonas monitors everything.
JONAS: What I do for my fuel prices is, I have my -- the figures that I have here tell me how short I'm going to be in the accounts that buy fuel for the departments.
STARR: So the budget around here really isn't that different than your family budget really?
JONAS: Well, that's right. We're car pooling a lot at home now. Took the metro yesterday.
STARR: Seriously?
JONAS: Yes, I did. I've been taking it the last couple of days. My husband, he's a former retired Marine, so he's pretty tight with the bucks. (END VIDEOTAPE)
STARR: And Jonas has another tip for saving money that might sound familiar, pay your bills on time. She's making sure the Pentagon does that and so far she calculates she has saved about a quarter of a billion dollars in late fees.
VELSHI: All right. And that -- I mean, when you're at the Pentagon, that's a lot of money to be able to save, but they've got big budget needs. Where do they get the new money for those?
STARR: You know, I asked that question, Ali. I said, so is there a secret printing press for money in the basement? There's always been that rumor here in the Pentagon. But, of course, what they do is they go to Congress to get authorization to spend more money. So, of course, they're really getting it from you and me, the taxpayers.
VELSHI: Yes. And those gas prices have really, really hit them very hard. It's a great story. It's a good lesson to learn. You know, when the biggest of the big save money by doing those things, it could work for us.
Thank you so much, Barbara.
STARR: Sure.
WILLIS: Ali, a quarter of a billion in late fees? Why weren't they doing that before?
 
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