Cuts to entitlement programs including Social Security, Medicare and welfare may be on the chopping block “very soon, very shortly,” according to President Trump, in a sentiment being echoed with increasing frequency by other senior Republicans in the past two weeks.

The cuts to entitlement and welfare programs are necessary not only to pay for tax reform and reduce the deficit, but to rev the economy, GOP leaders argue.

Tax reform is estimated to cost between $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. Entitlement programs, which include Social Security, Medicare and food stamps, cost an additional $711 billion in 2016. The overall tab is added to the deficit, which continues to climb.

Last month, President Trump said welfare reform will “take place right after taxes, very soon, very shortly after taxes.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) floated a  trial balloon of Medicare and Social Security cuts at a Politico Q&A sponsored by the Financial Services Foundation this week. Financial Advisor Magazine reported on Rubio’s comments here.

“We don’t need to reduce benefits on current retirees or even near-term retirees, but we can make changes for future generations such as mine, and do so in a way that people can prepare for, so the changes will barely be felt,” Rubio said.

As much as 23 percent of Social Security benefits and 14 percent of Medicare benefits could disappear by 2034 unless Congress acts, according to the most recent report from trustees. Without a political fix, future retirees could experience a 23 percent reduction in benefits or a 20 percent increase in payroll taxes to fund the shortfalls, the trustee analysis found.

While Rubio has not provided specifics on how he would cut Social Security and Medicare benefits, age and means-related testing that would reduce benefits and/or increase taxes on wealthy individuals (yet to be defined) and push the start of benefits out past age 67, is most likely, tax and policy analysts say.

While some financial advisors have dismissed the notion that a 25 percent mandatory cut in Social Security will affect their wealthy clients—the longevity of most retirement plans would be scalped by a decrease or elimination in guaranteed retirement income such as Social Security.

“What this means for beneficiaries is that in the absence of congressional action, benefits could be delayed or indiscriminately reduced across the board by 25 percent,” said Romina Boccia, a fiscal and economic expert and deputy director of the Thomas A. Roe Institute at the conservative Heritage Foundation. 

The current drag on the deficit is significant, Boccia said. The 2014 cash-flow deficit was $39 billion. Over the next 10 years, the OASI program’s cumulative cash-flow deficit will amount to $840 billion, according to the trustees’ intermediate assumptions.

“For as long as the federal government is running deficits in excess of Social Security’s cash-flow deficits, we can assume that this $840 billion shortfall will be matched dollar for dollar by an increase in the public debt,” said Boccia, who maintains that reforms are dire.

While whipping votes for a GOP tax bill on Thursday, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) attacked “liberal programs” for the poor and said Congress needed to stop wasting Americans' money, the Washington Post reported.

“We're spending ourselves into bankruptcy,” Hatch said. “Now, let's just be honest about it: We're in trouble. This country is in deep debt. You don't help the poor by not solving the problems of debt, and you don't help the poor by continually pushing more and more liberal programs through.”

Congress will be required to pass reconciliation legislation in 2018 or automatic cuts impacting Medicare will kick in.

Critics of entitlement program cuts are girding for battle. In a letter blasted out to lawmakers last week, AARP CEO Jo Ann C. Jenkins said that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has confirmed that unless Congress takes action, reconciliation legislation will result in automatic federal funding cuts of $136 billion in fiscal year 2018, $25 billion of which must come from Medicare.

“Such sweeping cuts would be detrimental to an already vulnerable population,” Jenkins said. “The Senate tax bill could trigger tens of billions of dollars in potential cuts to Medicare next year alone. The large increase in the deficit will inevitably lead to calls for greater spending cuts, which are likely to include dramatic cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and other important programs serving older Americans.”

Trump has not specified which programs would be affected by proposed “entitlement reform,” but Democrats say “entitlement” is code for cuts to “Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has been waging a Twitter war against the president all week, including putting the President’s tweets onto poster boards Sanders displayed on the house floor. Among them, this Trump promise contained in a tweet on March 10, 2016:

“It is my absolute intention to leave Social Security the way it is. Not increase the age and leave Social Security as it is.”

President Trump should either take cuts to entitlement programs off the table or admit to his voters that he lied, Sanders said on the Senate floor on Tuesday.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), echoed Sanders sentiments. The ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee said “entitlement reform” and “welfare reform” are code for attacks on Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and food stamps programs.

On the Senate floor Thursday night, Sanders asked Rubio and Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) to pledge that Republicans would not advance cuts to Medicare and Social Security after their tax bill.

While both said there is no plan to cut benefits on “current” beneficiaries, neither closed the door to changing the programs for future beneficiaries.

“I am not going to support any cuts to people who are on the program and need those benefits. But I want this program to survive,” Toomey said.

While philosophical discussion and political resolve may be different things in the face of 2018 midterm elections, never say never.

On the welfare front, Trump wants to decrease eligibility and tie benefits to work and he has allies. Since at least last year, House Majority Leader Paul Ryan along with House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin T. Brady (R-Texas) have been teeing up a policy proposal called “A Better Way,” which would impose new limits on eligibility and work requirements on most of the country’s anti-poverty benefits.

Correction: This article original referred to Medicare and Medicaid as "Depression-era" entitlement programs. A reader pointed out that those programs were enacted in the 1960s.