Technically, SS/Medicare/Medicaid are raised and funded on their own taxes, separate from the discretionary budget. (You can see "income tax", "FICA" and "medi

Technically, SS/Medicare/Medicaid are raised and funded on their own taxes, separate from the discretionary budget. (You can see "income tax", "FICA" and "medicare/medicaid" on your tax bill). When people talk about the deficit, they're typically talking about the operating budget deficit, which is only funded from income tax and runs on a separate budget from the SS and medicare/medicaid administrations. So it doesn't really make sense to advocate cutting entitlements to address the deficit, they have problems too but they're separate problems.