The U.S. Senate has a strange definition of what constitutes an "emergency."

President Bush has asked Congress for $92 billion in emergency funding to continue fighting the war in Iraq and to help rebuild the Gulf Coast.

The House trimmed his request to $91.9 billion, spending which is above and beyond the regular, deficit-laden federal budget. But the Senate has gone hog wild, adding about $14 billion to the bill's cost. Among the items that senators consider emergencies to be borne by taxpayers:

$700 million to relocate a privately owned railroad in Mississippi, tracks that the federal government already paid $250 million to repair after Hurricane Katrina.

$15 million to promote the seafood industry in the Gulf.

$3 billion for a continuing makeover of the Army that even the Defense Department admits won't directly affect the fighting in Iraq.

$228 million as a down payment for the Air Force to buy seven C-17 cargo planes that won't be built until 2008, at the earliest. Completing them would cost an additional $1.6 billion.

$223 million for the Marine Corps to buy three V-22 Osprey helicopters, aircraft that have yet to be used in combat in Iraq. Yes, the V-22 program provides many local jobs at a Boeing plant in Ridley Township, Delaware County. But the government already has spent about $18 billion to develop the V-22, and this line-item is being diverted from other military hardware that better qualify as emergencies in Iraq, such as night-vision goggles and equipment for destroying mines.

Sens. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) and John McCain (R., Ariz.) won a moral victory last week when they persuaded their colleagues to kill that $15 million seafood-promotion program. Their triumph leaves them with only an additional $13.985 billion or so to cut from this bloated bill.

If senators cannot tighten their belts beyond passing up the broiled seafood combo platter, President Bush should follow through on his threat to veto the bill. He has threatened vetoes but has never used one. Faced with Bush's empty "don't-make-me-stop-this-car" warnings, Congress has made a budget mess in the backseat as it spends and spends with no regard to consequences. Maybe new White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, the former budget director, will help the president find his veto courage.

Annual budget deficits have climbed to more than $300 billion. As Comptroller General David M. Walker wrote in an essay for The Inquirer on Sunday, the United States is the "world's largest debtor nation." Our spending spree is being underwritten by foreign investors; our economic fate is increasingly in their grip. Worse, the deficits do not fully reflect the looming budget crises in Medicare and Social Security.

Without fiscal discipline now, chances are slim that Washington will be able to solve tomorrow's budget problems without inflicting severe hardships on taxpayers and beneficiaries of federal aid.

That discipline must start now, one shrimp at a time.