Lay off 80,000 mercenaries and contractors instead of 80,000 actual pentagon troops. Give these jobs back to soldiers.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld "privatized" many functions of the military during the George W. Bush administration. This results in for-profit contractors doing jobs that used to be done by regular soldiers, in most cases at a far higher cost for the contractors to do the work than the cost of regular soldiers doing the same functions. Recent talk of eliminating 80,000 soldiers should instead become talk of eliminating 80,000 of these mercenaries and contractors, and giving their outsourced functions back to the regular military. This would save much more money than eliminating 80,000 troops.