it's not the hardworking legal Mexicans that are stealing tax dollars. It's the people who feel entitled to handouts. Taxes are fine where they are, in fact I'd probably raise them. But the budget should be balanced.
First, let's get rid of "life sentences without parole". They're a drain on society. If someone's guilty of something that gets them a sentence that will never allow them back into society, why not just execute them? Or put them into the American equivalent of a Siberian work camp? They shouldn't get 3 squares a day and an hour of recess for doing something that gets them "life without parole". They're not "entitled" to that.
Secondly, stop spending so much on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Raise the age limit, and start giving according to receipts. We only pulled in 780M or so in SS, Medicare/aid taxes this year, but gave out 1.1B. I just got a social security statement that says I'll "probably" get around 72% of my projected award. Let me have my part of my Social Security money and pay it into a Roth IRA. You can keep the rest to pay for the old people already in the program. People shouldn't be "entitled" to stop working at 62. Obviously, if you're already in it you should still get it. Start telling young people that they're not going to get Social Security, and that the SS Taxes they're paying are b/c their parents and grandparents bought them into the low end of the ponzi scheme, and to suck up the fact that they're paying for the mistakes of others. I'm fine with being the "accountability Generation".
Thirdly, stop spending so much on nation-building if it isn't our nation. If Nike can use foreign workers to make a shoe for 17 cents that costs $100 over here, then we should have Iraqis and Afghanis building roads and schools and infrastructure for pennies on the dollar, not at higher prices than they'd be in the States.