argue that members of both parties don't want THEIR benefits cut, just someone else's. But to be fair, I think we have to make a distinction between SS/Medicare and military and Medicaid spending.

The first two are self funded so I think it's legitimate to ask why are talking about those two in tandem with other spending.

As far as SS, it's valid to ask WTH are we talking about cutting SS when we've been putting in 12.4% of our working wages all along? How many people putting away another 12.4% independent of that into 401K's IRA's, etc are worried at all about remaining solvent? The question should be where is all that money going and why isn't 12.4% enough.

As for Medicare, the obvious question seems to be if we're paying out 3 dollars for every dollar coming in iirc, how do we expect that to survive if we keep rates at the current 2.9%? I seriously doubt even getting rid of "waste, fraud and abuse" would make a dent in that problem. People live much longer now, time to up the age, the share paid by recipients, or the tax funding it. Or probably all 3.

Military (and Medicaid) funding however comes from non-payroll tax revenue. So that does have to be addressed via spending cut prioritizing and increasing revenue. And it's probably foolish to think you can do it without including both.