The Defense Budget is filled with earmarks just like all the others. Those could be cut. For example, why is it necessary to have money in the Defense budget for Breast Cancer Research? Hit those items which shouldn’t be there anyway!
What we need, I think, is a quid pro quo: You cut $50B, I'll cut $50B. You target Defense? Let me choose where in Defense. I'm targetting Education, but I'll let you choose where in Education.
Make it a joint effort so that it's really bipartisan.
Now, I suspect that the Democrats won't want to have anything to do with this method -- and they should be beaten about the head and shoulders with a giant stick over their refusal to engage in a bipartisan effort at cutting spending. WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!