I agree, but the hard part with these programs is that you have many people on them who are too old to work and adjust to this new reality that they will have to pay for everything. They are stuck -- unable to pay for themselves now.
The first things that I would do with Social Security is to get everyone off of it who didn't pay into it. You've got old people from every country around the world who come here and immediately start collecting Social Security checks, even if they never paid a penny into it. You've got drug addicts who are collecting Social Security checks because they are qualified as "disabled". That's BS. I don't know what the proportion of those in these categories are, but I'd dump them and quick because they are the easiest targets that no one would give a crap about -- and that would be a beginning to "doing something".
I would wager that a lot of Americans believe there is a lockbox, that is overflowing with billions of dollars which have been collected from your paychecks, and set aside (just for you) and that your retirement will be funded by periodic withdrawals from this enormous fund.
Well, people need to know that there is nothing there. It's empty, it's been empty for a long time. It's bankrupting us. Say it loud. Say it often.
Now, if we have people's attention, we start talking about the group of people who deserve to still have a retirement funded by the government (you can't just yank this stuff away from all the old people) and the group of people who just aren't going to get anything out of it (30 years old? Paid into social security for 10 years? Sorry. Got nothing for you.)
Hash out those details over time -- but people need to realize that trillion dollar deficits are not sustainable, and, No, cutting funding for Afghanistan isn't going to magically solve our budget woes.
Republicans, in my opinion, do a poor job of hammering on this stuff.