Wildfire suppression costs are soaring to over one billion tax dollars per year. This is causing a fiscal crisis in the Forest Service which has exceeded its suppression budget almost every year for the last 20 years. The agency now spends nearly half of its total appropriated budget on firefighting, and has been forced to transfer billions of dollars away from several non-fire land management programs to pay for suppression. Recent legislative changes to suppression funding (e.g. the FLAME fund) may provide better accounting for suppression costs, but do not impose firm budgetary limits on suppression spending, nor absolutely prevent continued transfers of funds from other management programs to pay for firefighting.