Can We Cut Defense Spending?

Apropos of John McCain's pledge to expand the Army and the strains that would place on the budget, Matthew Yglesias says "the first rule of Washington budgeting is that money spent on the Department of Defense doesn’t actually count as money."

That's undoubtedly true. But isn't Barack Obama promising to expand the Army? And during both debates, McCain suggested he would review the Pentagon budget for cuts. Obama, perhaps understandably, made no such mention.

I'm pretty confident we're going to see some rather significant cuts to military spending in the next 10 years, no matter who's in office (barring, of course, some dramatic event). I'm hard pressed to see how we cope with the boomer retirement while simultaneously retaining our Cold War-era defense commitments. Something has to give.