President Barack Obama has asked his cabinet secretaries to put their heads together to cut $100 million from their budgets.

And so far, the Ed. Department has found almost $10 million in spare change.

For one thing, the department is going to get rid of its full-time education policy attaché at the U.S. Mission to UNESCO in Paris. (Too bad, education policy experts who are owed a political favor, that woulda been a sweet a gig.) That will save $713,000.

The Department will also make more employees share each printer, resulting in a savings of $6.7 million a year.

And it will require most employees to use a laptop computer for their work (as opposed to keeping a desktop and also receiving a laptop). This will result in annual savings of about $2 million. I’m guessing that doesn’t figure in the cost of a chiropractor to help out employees who get sore backs lugging their laptops to and from Maryland Avenue.

On a different note, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has a reason to gloat at today’s first-ever Obama administration cabinet meeting. He is one of the stand-out all starsin the cabinet, according to The Fix - the Washingtonpost.com’s Politics Blog. And apparently, education is President Barack Obama’s “favorite issue.”