If the government is to take action in order to create and encourage job growth without adding to an already stifling deficit, the government will need the money to do so. One way to obtain said funds is to decrease spending elsewhere. The best place to start, in my opinion, is the military.
No matter how its proponents spin the facts, war is still expensive. Sure, the military is steady enough employment as long as you can manage to stay alive and outwardly sane, but it's notoriously inefficient. Sending a disproportionate amount of the massive military budget to contractors for overpriced equipment might be a necessary evil in the case of a defensive war against a determined global threat. When the officially enemy would be squabbling with itself if not for the war uniting them, continuing to fund a war is not good for anyone except the politicians and contractors that profit from it. Much better to pull out the troops and spend the money elsewhere.
It could be argued that the military creates jobs so decreasing military spending is bad for the job market, but that's a bad argument. It's a lot cheaper to create jobs in the United States than to pay to send soldiers and tanks and planes overseas.
Ending the physical wars might be the only way to start making some headway in the symbolic wars on poverty, hunger, and even drugs since all three are related.
