As you say, we need to look at entitlement programs. Although It wouldn't directly result in savings, I think that there should a community service requirement to collect welfare benefits. This way, it isn't entirely a handout, and something good should come from it, both for the individual and the state.

We also need to look at some of the reasons that those programs are so expensive. For instance, one reason that medical care is so expensive in the US is that prescription drugs cost more here than they do anywhere else in the world. Importing prescription drugs should be made much simpler, it should be encouraged, and indeed, any drugs provided by government funding should be purchased in Canada.

When people in the Food and Drug Administration inevitably complain about this, cut funding to the FDA.

Speaking of drugs, the vast majority of those currently considered illegal in the US should be legalized and taxed. This will save billions of dollars lost in the ineffective "War on Drugs" and save on money spent incarcerating people for drug offenses. This will have the added benefit of easing the problem of prison overpopulation (because the US has more people in prisons than any other country in the world), it should dramatically reduce the more serious crimes associated with illegal drug trafficking, and it will actually generate income because the drugs can be taxed.

Speaking of taxes, that whole system needs an overhaul too. I, like many others, support a federal sales tax. With such a system, we wouldn't see situations where companies can receive large refunds on taxes that they didn't have to pay. At the other end of the spectrum, illegal immigrants would no longer be exempt from paying taxes. It becomes a simple question for everyone. Did you buy stuff? OK, you paid your taxes. This would allow us to abolish the IRS, which would save a great deal of money. There would also need to be a corresponding import tax, and as long as it's higher than the federal sales tax, it might allow us to being cutting into our trade deficit as well.

You mentioned military spending in your original post. That needs to be cut too. We are far too quick to engage, and our military is too active in too many places.

There's a lot more that would still need to be done, but that would be a decent start.