The general fear mongering over Social Security and Medicare is simply not based in the reality of our current federal monetary system. That system changed drastically in '34 when FDR ended the convertibility of US dollars to gold domestically.
With a gold standard workers were required to set aside part of the productivity that they added to the economy so it would be available to them when they were no longer productive. The payroll deductions for Social Security also gave those workers a legal claim to their benefits when they reached retirement age that politicians couldn't simply erase by legislation.
When FDR made our currency sovereign by fiat (which was later extended to foreign trade exchanges by Nixon in '71 when he removed us from the Bretton-Woods treaty) the need to prefund the program was made obsolete. However, the general consensus of banking and its establishment economists and politicians was to ignore such a seismic shift for government finance and continue on as usual.
As a result, boomers dedicated a considerable percentage of their lifetime earnings paying down the very debt the cons use to justify reducing their benefits. A sovereign currency issuing government with a fiat monetary system has no need for "revenue" and every dollar returned to it is destroyed/balanced by the debt that created it, unable to "fund" anything beyond that. ALL spending by the federal government is BRAND NEW money, including the benefits of Social Security recipients.
Revenue constraints on federal spending haven't been a thing since '34, but here we are again debating if our seniors deserve the good cat food or the generic imported brand as if it was the breaking point of the doom and gloom predictions of those who aren't honest about how their government is funded. The US dollar is "self funding" and the national debt is not owed by the private sector, but is simply an accurate accounting of our money supply left in the economy after taxation "uncreates" dollars it previously created with spending. (try buying a Treasury bond with anything other than dollars)
The only thing more deceptive is the annual theater Congress entertains us with over the "debt ceiling" which has the only purpose of reinforcing the mistaken concept that our government must "find" money to spend on the public purpose it is mandated to fund fully "for the general welfare" in our constitution. The result of this theater will be, as always, cuts in benefits to the people who produce the value that makes our economy strong and the US dollar the most desired savings vehicle on the planet.
Congress should be careful about deceiving the people with the least to lose and who might be quite content in a comfy federal country club prison for their remaining days. If boomers find out that our deductions from payroll over our entire lives actually funded nothing except reducing a mostly meaningless accounting number we might show up at the capital with more than canes to shake at them.
