Each year, Washington goes through the masquerade of writing up a budget and forgetting to include money to keep the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan funded.
Then they pass a supplemental “emergency” funding bill later on.
These shenanigans are a fairly recent invention:
In , at the start of the Korean War, supplemental appropriations comprised almost three quarters of all appropriations. By , supplementals were under 3 percent. By of the Korean War, supplementals were down to zero.
In , the first year of the escalation in Vietnam, supplemental appropriations were seven times as high as regular appropriations. , they were roughly equal. In supplementals were less than a fifth of regular appropriations, and by they were down to zero.
In contrast, we’re about to see the biggest supplemental appropriations request yet for the Iraq war — anticipated to be somewhere in the $100 billion to $160 billion range. In either case, this supplemental itself will be more than either the White House or the alleged opposition party estimated the entire Iraq War would cost back in .
The request will hit the new, Democrat-controlled Congress, which is expected to greet it with flowers as if it were an invasion of foreign troops, a move which we can expect to frustrate, but not educate, anti-war liberals.
Some of these have started a “Stop Funding War!” campaign, aimed at the new Congress. Would that they practice that chant in front of a mirror!
