Budgeting With John McCain

Via Chris Bowers, McCain's top economic advisor says defense budget cuts could pay for endless tax cuts. Meanwhile, in Foreign Affairs McCain calls for increased defense spending to make his agenda of endless war feasible:

Along with more personnel, our military needs additional equipment in order to make up for its recent losses and modernize. We can partially offset some of this additional investment by cutting wasteful spending. But we can also afford to spend more on national defense, which currently consumes less than four cents of every dollar that our economy generates -- far less than what we spent during the Cold War. We must also accelerate the transformation of our military, which is still configured to fight enemies that no longer exist.

So on the one hand, defense cuts will pay for tax cuts. But on the other hand, we need to substantial increase defense spending as a share of GDP to something more like Cold War levels.

Straight talk!