Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) says he is “prepared to work with Democrats to ‘ratchet back the spending’ and indicated he is even prepared to look at trimming a sacred cow, the budget for the Defense Department,” Fox News reports.

The economic crisis has refocused some Republicans, including newly-minted House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., prompting them to step gingerly into this arena that is often fraught with political peril, always careful to reiterate, as Toomey did with reporters in his temporary office space Wednesday, that the men and women in the theaters of war will get all the money they need to do their jobs effectively.

But many who are determined to see the more than $14 trillion in national debt and steadily rising deficit drastically reduced have begun to take a look at the hundreds of billions of dollars that go to the Pentagon annually, noting that simply trimming from the non-defense, non-Entitlement spending programs is no longer enough.

"Defense spending cannot be taken off the table categorically," the Pennsylvania Republican, a former head of the conservative Club for Growth, said, adding, "The men and women who are putting their lives at risk on the battlefields need to have all the resources they need, but there’s a vast amount of spending that goes through the Pentagon that is not related to the direct needs of the men and women who are in the service. So…we’ve got to look at the defense budget…to find savings there, as well."