Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal article ($) detailing the expected supplemental spending request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is a perfect illustration of the problems that emergency funding bills present and why Congressional oversight of such spending is badly needed.

Lockheed Martin Corp.'s new Joint Strike Fighter [(JSF)] plane won't be ready to see action for years. But that didn't stop the Air Force from inserting two of the jets into the coming emergency-funding request for operations in Iraq.

The Pentagon's supplemental budgets traditionally pay for war costs such as personnel, equipment repairs and ammunition. But as the Joint Strike Fighter request shows, the coming supplemental is being used by the military services for more than replacing what has been lost in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is being used to acquire future weapons that normally would be funded through the regular Pentagon budget.

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An October directive from Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England opened the floodgates by allowing the services to request emergency funds to replace equipment and upgrade to newer models for the "overall efforts related to the global war on terror," not just operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"It's a feeding frenzy," says an army official involved in budget planning. "Using the supplemental budget, we're now buying the military we wish we had,"

In addition to the JSF, spending requests for the following equipment not currently being used in Iraq and Afghanistand are tucked inside the Pentagon's shopping list:

• $3.67 billion for the Army to reconfigure ground forces into smaller units
• $3.04 billion for the Navy to repair and acquire aircraft - an amount beyond what has been lost in combat
• $62 million for ballistic missiles
• V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft, which has never been deployed in a combat zone