This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, June 2, 2008. I'm Caleb Brown.

It's been five years since the start of the war in Iraq, so why is so much of the spending for the war

being done through emergency spending bills, so-called supplementals?

We get some perspective from Cato Institute Budget Fellow Jeff Patch.

Supplemental spending bills are traditionally used for emergency legislation.

They were used after Hurricane Katrina

to provide money to rebuild that region.

And they've also been used since 2001

to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Since 2001, almost 700 billion dollars

in supplemental funding has been provided

for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Several hundred billion dollars has been in domestic spending.

And libertarians and others have huge concerns

with using supplemental spending bills to subvert the regular budgetary

process because it avoids a lot of transparency in the system and it creates added deficits because

90% of spending for the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan are off the books

and so it provides members of Congress. the war in Afghanistan are off the books.

And so it provides members of Congress

with a politically expedient way

to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

without taking into consideration long-term effects on the nation's fiscal house.

...