A lot of current conservative grousing about the deficit is priming the electorate for destroying social security. That's why they always highlight it as the main cause of the deficit, even though it has a totally separate income stream from the rest of the budget.

Republicans have done the exact opposite of balancing the budget at least since Reagan (inclusive) non-stop, zero R presidents have even done as well as democrats at pursuing a balanced budget since then, so they're not serious about it, including and perhaps especially Trump—but they really, really want to get their hands on social security, it's so much money out of the hands of rich people that they just can't stand it.