Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sat down with reporters Dec. 21 before the rest of Washington evacuated for the holidays. Gates provided some forthright answers, which is his character, to the press corps - a gift in itself compared with his predecessor.

But what I wanted to note was Gates' answers about topline defense budget increases. He and several other Pentagon leaders for years now have been stressing that the country must spend more of its gross domestic product toward defense. They peg 4% as a minimum - which is about where we're at now when you account for off-budget supplemental spending, as it should be considered.

The Pentagon and the White House are finishing up their haggling over the fiscal 2009 budget plan, which the president will present in February. Speculation has run rampant in Washington over which armed service gets a topline boost, if any, as they all fear having to turn cherished equipment acquisitions into bill-payers for a growing list of other important demands. Here's what Gates had to say:

"Well, part of the problem is that if you add in the costs of the war, the percentage of GDP is about 4 percent being spent on defense, if you will. I actually think that we had a very thoughtful conversation in the House Armed Services Committee earlier in the year on what the percentage of GDP devoted to defense and securing the nation should be. And I got the impression from both sides of the aisle that there was a sense that that probably ought to be about 4 percent.  
 
The question is whether you make a transition to that after, whether you can make a transition to that after principal combat costs in the war are behind us, whether that remains an aspiration, or whether we try and do something in the near term about that. The FY '09 budget for us is largely locked into place and, I would say, does not contain the kind of significant increase that you were talking about. So I would say that particularly as long as the costs of the war continue that having a base Defense budget that is 4 percent of GDP is likely to remain an aspiration rather than a specific goal."