Social Security will die very soon. Ponzi schemes always fail.
As far as the Solyndra thing goes, it is like this. The federal government has no place picking winners and losers. Every time they give money to a company that could not get it through private means they hurt that companies competitors.
Clean air act started out great. So did the EPA. When I was a kid in LA we had "Smog Days" where we could not go out an play because pollution was so bad. It got fixed. My kids have not had one single smog day. But they do not give up. Now the air you breath out is a pollutant.
Medicare is great for the people on it. It really hurts the medical professionals. The costs are passed on to other patients.
DARPA and the like. This is good stuff. Government should spend on pie in the sky stuff like DARPA does. Places where no sane private company can see a profit in. Sometimes great things can come of it. NASA going to the moon is another thing that government should do because they are the only ones that really can.
Government has a place. The problem is that when you use a government agency to "fix" a problem that problem can never be fixed or the jobs go away. Therefore they always expand their reach. They do not ever go away.