The problem is that many people see no upper limit to how much the State should take care of us all. Most liberals see no problem with putting 300 million people on Medicare, although it's already breaking under the burden of the much smaller number it already covers.
There are a great many people who would be perfectly happy as the wards of an almighty State. Many Europeans seem to see this as the natural human condition, and I suppose after years of conditioning, so will Americans.
But at some point, people may discover the hard way that America's wealth and prosperity does not flow like manna from our lords in Washington, no matter how many times our political leaders tell you it does. If this were true, the most socialist nations on the planet would be the most prosperous and innovative, and those with the most economic freedom would be the poorest and most stagnant.
If you had told Roosevelt his Social Security budget would one day be a quarter of the entire national budget, I doubt he would have believed you. In 1950 it was around two percent.
Despite the oceans of compassion welling in the hearts of our politicians, the fact still remains that if the budget is to be balanced, pretending entitlements aren't a huge part of the problem is not realistic.
This paper makes good reading.
...Of the total federal FI [Fiscal Imbalance] of $44.2 trillion, Social Security’s FI is about $7.0 trillion in present value. Medicare’s FI is $36.6 trillion (for both Parts A and B). Medicare Part A (Hospital Insurance) contributes $20.5 trillion and Part B (Supplementary Medical Insurance) contributes $16.1 trillion.
By contrast, the rest of federal government’s FI amounts to only $0.5 trillion, which is comprised of a surplus of prospective revenues over outlays of $4.6 trillion as well as liabilities to Social Security, Medicare, and the debt held by the public of $5.1 trillion.
Our estimate of federal Fiscal Imbalance is more than 10 times as large as today’s debt held by the public. Hence, implementing policy changes that only eliminate debt held by the public would still leave the federal government far from being financially solvent. Moreover, the FI grows by about $1.6 trillion per year to about $54.0 trillion by just 2008 unless corrective policies are implemented before then. This rapid annual increment is also around 10 times as large as the official annual deficit reported for 2002.
How large must spending cuts or revenue increases be to eliminate the current $44.2 trillion FI? We estimate that to achieve fiscal sustainability, an additional 16.6 percent of annual payrolls would have to be taxed away forever beginning today. Alternatively, income tax revenues would have to be hiked permanently by another two-thirds beginning immediately. Yet another alternative would be to permanently eliminate all future federal discretionary outlays. Moreover, the size of corrective policies will grow larger the longer their adoption is postponed. For example, waiting until just 2008 before initiating corrective policies would require a permanent increase in wage taxes by 18.2 percentage points rather than 16.6 percentage points beginning today.