Every dollar in the budget competes against every other dollar, and so that’s one of the attractions of emergency spending of moving it off the books, so to speak, not off of our deficit and debt, but off of the books that Congress is approving. And so, it puts it in a more exalted status, and so that’s one of the political tradeoffs. Kinda going back to the original guns versus butter, essentially, if you’re spending more money at the Pentagon, than that’s less money potentially that’s available, unless you pile up more deficit spending, for other things that society wants.

-Steve Ellis