Go here:

www.omb.gov

Look at the headings of the budget sections, and then go read the Constitution. List out the things in the budget that are expressly mentioned in the Consitution. See how short the list is? The answer to the deficit, social security reform, education reform, election reform, etc is to simply return the federal government to a size consistent with it's constitutional role. Will that ever happen? Doubtful. It's worth a look and a dream though.

You may say, "Chitchat, the Consitution says that the federal government should look out for the 'general welfare'. Doesn't that mean all those social programs are constitutional?"

Well, rather than go on about it, I'll just pull in a quote from one of the authors of the founding documents, James Madison:

"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions." - James Madison, Letter to Edmund Pendleton, January 21, 1792 _Madison_ 1865, I, page 546

"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constitutents." - James Madison, regarding an appropriations bill for French refugees, 1794

"With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." - James Madison, Letter to James Robertson, April 20, 1831 _Madison_ 1865, IV, pages 171-172

and a Jefferson quote for good measure:

"Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated." - Thomas Jefferson