I came across an interesting article in my Labor Day weekend reading. (Yes, I do know how to have a good time.)

“What’s the Emergency?” [PDF; scroll down a bit] is the name of an article in the Summer 2008 issue of Regulation magazine, and it illustrates yet another dimension of how the federal spending process is out of control.

In addition to falling well behind in the regular spending process, Congress is increasingly passing emergency supplemental spending bills – even for ordinary spending.

In May 2007, for instance, President Bush signed into law the biggest supplemental bill in history, $120 billion [$1,300 per U.S. family - ed.], to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and pay for hurricane recovery and agriculture disaster relief at home. . . . By contrast, the average annual amount of emergency supplemental spending in the 1990s — a decade that saw interventions in Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo — was just $13.8 billion.

“Emergency” bills are given special exceptions from budgetary rules designed to restrain spending. But Congress never defined the term “emergency” other than to say that these bills must be necessary, sudden, urgent, unforeseen, and temporary. These things are all in the eye of the beholder. As de Rugy points out, “most of the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — approximately $900 billion through the end of 2008 — has been funded through supplemental bills — effectively on top of the
Pentagon’s regular budget. While the costs of the wars may be necessary and not permanent, they are by no means sudden or unforeseen.”

Your Congress at work.

(Disclosures: I know and like de Rugy, and Regulation is a publication of my employer, The Cato Institute.)