I agree it's not an easy answer. Freakonomics author duo Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt in their 'Think Like a Freak' have an analogy about this. In one contentious example of policy problem, they write about education reform. Everybody talks about school reforms in Inner Cities, our ailing public schools (in Ghettos!), teacher grading, performance based pays, after school programs for vulnerable kids etc. No one have attempted to approach the problem from parenting perspective. Kids spend 11 waking hours at their parents. If Inner City parents are not helping their kids succeed at school then it is a major problem. Long story short, the topic they wrote was about approaching a problem from all data sets and variables. In this case, you are right, the policy of cutting government spending can only approach via Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Military. Those programs are the skin lumps, other programs are mere small warts in your finger. But guess who will speak for cutting those big programs - No one. So here we are.