With Congress and President Bush entering negotiations over the next tranche of war funding, via an emergency supplemental appropriations bill, now is a good time for a little emergency check. As the lead editorial in today's Washington Post, Not an Emergency, points out, "[f]ive years into paying for two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's outrageous that so much of the financing continues to be approved outside the normal budget process, through 'emergency' spending bills that must be passed, must be passed in a hurry..." So, five years to the month after "mission accomplished," after half a trillion dollars in war spending through supplementals, maybe it's time to focus attention on a budget reform proposal that has been circulating in Washington for, well, at least five years. It seeks to end a practice, which, as we have said "obscures or distorts important aspects of the fiscal impact of federal spending and, therefore, undermines the general fiscal responsibility of the federal government." This proposal would re-define "emergency" for supplemental appropriations purposes as:

• an essential or vital expenditure, not one that is merely useful or beneficial
• sudden—quickly coming into being, not building up over time
• urgent—pressing and compelling, requiring immediate action
• unforeseen—not predictable or seen beforehand as a coming need
• not permanent—the need is temporary in nature

So, who has been issuing this salutary proposal again and again, year in, year out, while it falls on deaf ears in the rest of official Washington? None other than... President Bush.