This is kind of the point though.

Cutting welfare spending will get us no where. The majority components of the federal budget are Defense, SS/Medicare/Medicaid, and debt payments. Not the forestry service or what we commonly know as welfare. At this point, even cutting everything else to zero still lands us in deficit. (Unless taxes are raised.)

To be serious, we need to talk about what cuts are to be made to SS/Medicare/Medicaid and the military. But no one wants to have that discussion. So we throw out meaningless issues like welfare and the forestry service. We quibble around at the extreme edges, never addressing the central problems. That's the essence of the politics being discussed. Those politics make the issue impossible to fix.

I honestly don't know why it's so hard? I'd be totally willing to countenance the necessary cuts to the sacred cow programs at this point. Why is everyone so opposed to it?

> To be serious, we need to talk about what cuts are to be made to SS/Medicare/Medicaid...

To be serious, we need to talk about the funding of it, not the cutting of it. If we raise the cap, it gets more funding.

If we increase Medicare taxes and then go to a single payer system, it could be funded as well.

There is zero reason to have for-profit health insurance.

> To be serious, we need to talk about what cuts are to be made to SS/Medicare/Medicaid and the military. But no one wants to have that discussion

The military-industrialist complex is a socialist jobs program.