Mises.org has an article about eliminating Social Security and Medicare, one of the third rails of American politics. I am reminded of a video (now taken down) of a libertarian debating a Democrat. In that video, th e Democrat says that his brilliant idea is to convince other Dems to endeavor to pass huge socialist programs, knowing that once those programs are in place, it will be nearly impossible to reverse. This has been true of Social Security, Medicare, and Obamacare. As messy and financially unstable as they are, so much has been forcibly invested that reversing it would be painful and because of the lack of adequate money to do it fairly, would cause many financial harm. It's like a graveyard - once you dedicate land for it, it's exceedingly difficult to take the land back. You'd have to dig up graves, which would upset relatives, and would be very expensive to achieve. But we're stuck with these socialist policies, and just because conservatives are not proposing their elimination doesn't mean they support socialism.
It's interesting how liberal fact-check sites debunk "myths" relating to SS. They claim that there never was a SS Trust, and so it's silly to say that government is draining funds for SS by combining with the general funds for Congress to spend. Yet they admit that in 1969 (under Democrat Pres. Johnson) that the SS Trust Fund was made to be included in the unified budget, which now can be spent. To me, that's the same thing. Also, blame is put on Ronald Reagan to make SS income taxable. Reagan just commission the Greenspan Committee to look into addressing the SS money shortfall. A bill to make SS income taxable was supported by Biden, and to break the 50-50 tie in the Senate, the tie-breaker was Al Gore, a Democrats. Yes, Nixon was responsible for creating Social Security Income, but I bet he never dreamed that it would be made open to illegal immigrants, as well. SS is even open to legal immigrants, who have not had to pay into the system. It's been shown that these immigrants get a better deal than regular Americans who have had to have deductions taken from their paychecks for as long as they've worked. Legal immigrants can just get the benefits.
So these programs, unfair and fraught with threats to insolvency, are almost impossible to reverse. Like so much in life: Easy to give - hard to take away.