What's another $94 billion for our grandchildren?

House Democrats are preparing an additional $94.2 billion in "emergency" spending for ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, some money for the flu, and I'm sure a few pet projects we'll find out about after the bill passes. Funny how the price always goes up:

Last month, President Barack Obama asked Congress to give him $83.4 billion more to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is hoping to use the money to begin phasing out combat operations in Iraq while building up U.S. forces in Afghanistan where al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are gaining strength.

The Pentagon wants the U.S. Congress to approve the money promptly, before a congressional recess that is scheduled to start at the end of May.

One of many budget mistakes of the Bush Adminstration was characterizing war funding as "emergency" spending, outside of the normal budgeting process. The argument was that up-tempo military operations required in a shooting war shouldn't be built into the baseline for Pentagon spending. But we're going on eight years of operations in Afghanistan, and six years in Iraq. American has made military commitments, and Congress has plenty of notice to build this spending into its budget. Continuing the fantasy of "emergency" spending simply removes accountability from both Congress and the President, and provides a fast-track for wasteful spending. In this case, we're throwing an additional $2 billion on influenza simply because an overhyped strain of moderately severe flu came out of Mexico this spring. The public health situation is no different than it was when Congress passed its last bloated spending bill, but members of both parties have caught the highly contagious "Do Something Syndrome", so our grandchildren inherit a hole that's $2 billion bigger.