James Gibney, Columnist

Needed: 'Tax-and-Defend' Republicans

Reagan's military budgets won't work in 2017.

June 2, 2015 at 2:57 PM UTC

James Gibney is an editor for Bloomberg Opinion. Previously an editor at the Atlantic, the New York Times, Smithsonian, Foreign Policy and the New Republic, he was also in the U.S. Foreign Service from 1989 to 1997 in India, Japan and Washington.

U.S.S. Ronald Reagan sails into uncharted fiscal waters.
Photographer: Dylan McCord/U.S. Navy via Getty Images

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Support for higher defense spending is axiomatic for the nine declared Republican presidential candidates, even the libertarian Rand Paul.

Yet few of these candidates have been as forthright about how they would get more bucks for the bang while keeping the deficit in check, also a key part of the Republican catechism.