The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has estimated in a new report that the overall cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since Sept. 11, 2001 will top $500 billion next year (the fiscal year ends September 30). The latest addition to this spending, of course, was the $69 billion allocated in the supplemental spending bill signed into law earlier this month.

The report states that even assuming the number of troops needed in the war will be brought down to 74,000 by 2010, war costs between FY07 and FY16 could total another $371 billion. Regardless of your views on the necessity of this war, this spending has simple grown too high (long ago) to be considered "emergency" anymore. If this President and Congress are going to continue spending on war efforts for years to come, they need to budget these costs along with the rest of the appropriations, not bypass the budget system time and again to request tens of billions of dollars. Doing so only rids the process of the necessary oversight and debate that should be in place when it comes to appropriating hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars toward a single effort.