While many Americans view the debt deadlock in Washington as a national stumbling block, advocates for Social Security and Medicare saw it as a victory when the congressional supercommittee declared defeat last week.

The programs they view as vital to the country's safety net were spared serious cuts when the committee failed to issue a plan. Yet experts warn that changes to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will have to be part of any solution to curtail the country's $15 trillion debt.

"It's just a fantasy to think that you can address this problem over the long term without looking at the entitlement programs," said Bob Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan group dedicated to eliminating budget deficits.

Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid make up about 40 percent of federal spending, he said. And they are only expected to grow as more baby boomers retire and health care costs continue to rise.

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The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction [Super Committee] has no public hearings planned for this week, and aides are mum about the group’s private meeting plans. The group has until Nov. 23 to make its recommendations to cut at least $1.2 trillion from the deficit over 10 years, though both aides and Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf have said that deadline is closer to the beginning of next month, due to the time it will take CBO to score the package.

Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, the co-chairs of the President’s fiscal commission, point out in their recent Washington Post op-ed that it is possible to reform entitlement programs in a way that preserves and even strengthens the safety net for the most vulnerable while achieving significant savings.

President Obama releases his latest deficit-reduction plan Monday. It will contain no changes to Social Security, the White House says, but no such announcement has been made about other entitlement programs.  Click here for more.