Except they get far more out of it than they put into it. If you live to be 72, you will get back everything you paid into Social Security. If you have one serious illness, you will get back everything you paid into Medicare. That's the problem, these are Ponzi Schemes, and eventually, like most Ponzi schemes, we've run out of "suckers"... um, new investors.
When Social Security and Medicare started, most people didn't didn't live to be 65. So it was kind of a safe bet. today the average life span is 78 years.
The CATO institute are a bunch of liars. The only way you get anywhere near a Trillion is if you include Medicaid and CHIP, which again, more often than not goes to middle class white folks paying for health insurance, special needs education, or nursing home care.
We spend close to 2 Trillion on Social Security and Medicare alone.
We only spend $111 Billion on SNAP, 90 billion on Section 8, and 30 Billion on TANF.