Truth in Spending

The Washington Post reports today that the Bush administration plans to request another $70 billion in supplemental funding to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The war on terrorism and the war in Iraq will dominate the defense landscape for the foreseeable future, so we need to stop using so-called emergency supplementals to pay for them and we need to include the costs in the regular federal budget. Wherever you stand on the war, this is a simple matter of "truth in spending." How can we have an honest discussion about federal budget priorities if we willfully ignore tens of billions of dollars of spending until after the budget has already passed?