Canada

The Business Council suggests the federal government could take a number of steps to get to 2.5 per cent. First, it said, the government could spend "strategically" in hopes of boosting economic growth, which would in turn lead to higher tax revenues. Second, it could "re-target" some funding currently committed to research, infrastructure and promoting the development of critical minerals in order for those funds to also count as defence spending.

Finally, the council suggests, the government can go looking to cut existing spending — maybe a lot of it.

Of course these fuckers would suggest austerity elsewhere. It's always the same fallacy that's used to cut programs which are often replaced by more expensive or worse private alternatives. We don't need to collect revenue before we spend it. We almost never spend just what we collect. If we did, it would be impossible to expand the economy without deflation. We can spend money today and if it's spent on things that generate economic activity, the economy grows. The effect is often magnified via different multipliers. This is well understood when it comes to infrastructure spending for example. But infrastructure isn't the only thing that works like this. Defence spending would trigger industrial economic activity that puts money right back into people's pockets and into the economy. Especially if we avoid doing it via a mostly private corporate industrial complex like they do it in the US, where a lot of that spending is captured by the major shareholders.

Heck even banks don't wait for deposits in order to lend.

The only non-imaginary thing that could stand in the way of strengthening our defence is our real resources (and prioritization therof). Do we have the labor and materials to mobilize for this, without starving another important part of the economy from it. One might ask whether we have too many people working retail, delivery and finance jobs for example.