I worked on my agency's budget for several years and took Federal budget analyst classes (more interesting than you'd think, to me anyway).
"Entitlement," from a budget analyst's perspective, has no positive or negative connotation. It just means an obligation which the government incurred according to some system of rules. If you qualify under those rules, and you apply, the government must pay you. In that respect, it's different from budget requests which every agency must justify to Congress every year.
Some entitlements (SS, Federal pensions, Medicare) receive recipient funding, while others (military pensions, SNAP benefits) do not. Professional and amateur politicians love to conflate "entitlement" (the budget term) with "entitled" (the attitude that I deserve some goodie, whether I paid into a fund or not). People are so vulnerable to being gulled this way, that the very fact that I mentioned military pensions and SNAP in the same sentence, probably riles up some people!
Amethyst
