Despite wanting to slash Social Security by raising the age of eligibility (a special hardship for constituents working physically demanding jobs), Congressman Cline is now posing as a champion of the program.

How is he doing that?

In his weekly newsletter, under the heading Protecting Social Security for American Citizens, Cline wrote:

Many folks across the Sixth District have expressed frustration that illegal immigrants are receiving benefits meant for American citizens. 

I suspect that many more folks across the Sixth District have expressed– via thousands of phone calls and emails to Cline– their opposition to the Trump-Musk wrecking-ball approach to federal programs, as well as Cline’s refusal to meet in person with his constituents at town hall meetings. But Cline doesn’t think that’s worth mentioning.

Cline asserted:

Under the Biden administration, more than two million Social Security numbers were issued to illegal immigrants in 2024. That gave them access to taxpayer-funded benefits that should go to American workers and families. These programs were never meant to serve those who entered this country illegally.

False. The Social Security numbers were issued to non-citizens authorized to legally work in the US under a program called Enumeration Beyond Entry.

As NewsNation explains:

The EBE program that distributes Social Security numbers to migrants with work authorizations began in 2017 during President Donald Trump’s first White House term. The initiative was established as a partnership between the SSA and DHS to assist the SSA in efficiently issuing Social Security numbers to migrants who were deemed eligible.

The SSA’s inspector general wrote in 2019 that the program allowed Homeland Security to vet the legal status of migrants who were eligible to work and then automatically issue them with Social Security numbers. As part of the process, migrants seeking Social Security numbers were required to provide proof of their legal status.

Non-citizens are entitled to receive Social Security benefits only under limited circumstances:

• Being legally admitted into the country as a permanent resident
• Granted conditional entry or asylum
• Paroled into the U.S. or admitted as a refugee

A 2024 analysis conducted by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy showed that undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion into federal, state and local taxes in 2022. The undocumented migrant employees who have been issued work permits also paid $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes and $6.4 billion in Medicare taxes during the same year, although, in most cases, those undocumented workers are not eligible to receive benefits from federal agencies.

Far from receiving benefits to which they aren’t entitled, undocumented workers are paying taxes for benefits they will likely never receive.

But that simple truth doesn’t fit with Cline’s obsessive need to focus on the alleged dangers posed by undocumented migrants above any and all other pressing issues.

In an interview Thursday with WDBJ TV, Congressman Cline responded to the large demonstrations throughout the Sixth District calling on him to hold in-person town hall meetings with his constituents.

Cline said while some of the protesters want to come in and meet with him, he feels many of them, including organizers, aren’t interested in having a conversation with him and only want to have their political opinions heard.

“I listen to everybody, and I welcome their viewpoints, but I won’t have my town hall meetings, which I’ve had dozens and dozens of over the years, used as platforms by one side or the other to attack one side or the other. That’s not what my town halls are for,” said Cline.

The last town hall Cline held in Roanoke was in November.

“It wasn’t six months ago that I was here in Roanoke City having a town hall. I didn’t see any of the folks out front at that town hall, but I welcome them to come in and sit down and have an exchange of ideas. We will be scheduling town halls in the future, no doubt,” said Cline.

Obviously Cline prefers tightly controlled meetings with small groups of “agitated liberals” (his words) rather than large open gatherings where he will be forced to listen and respond to dreaded “political opinions” from a wide range of constituents. And just as obviously he doesn’t want any media coverage of him dealing with difficult questions about his record and his sycophantic support for Trump.

More obvious still, Cline has watched fellow Congressional Republicans– even those representing deep-red districts– face large crowds of unhappy constituents, and he doesn’t want to have to do the same. At least for now.

But OK. Let’s take Cline up on his pledge to schedule town halls “in the future, no doubt.”

He promised this on April 24, 2025. The calendar is now ticking.

This quote from George Orwell has reoccurred to me in recent days.

Orwell was writing about leftwing apologists for Stalin in 1944, but he might just as well have been writing about Republicans like Congressman Cline.

I emailed the quote to Cline on the off chance he might see it, and on the even more off chance that it might make him think.

The fact that Steve Bannon last year served a four-month prison sentence for defying a Congressional subpoena didn’t deter Congressman Cline from a third appearance on Bannon’s “War Room” podcast on March 25.

Bannon asked Cline about the disclosure by Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic magazine that Trump’s national security adviser Michael Waltz used an unsecured commercial app to discuss plans for attacking Houthis in Yemen– a discussion that included specific details of the attack before it happened– and that Goldberg was accidentally included in the chat.

Instead of being outraged by a security breach that endangered the lives of American forces (as he would have been if it happened under a Democratic administration), Cline dismissed the reports about it as “a lot of noise” and blamed the media for “spinning this up.” He noted that President Trump said he had confidence in Waltz, as if this was enough to reassure us. Cline went on to put more blame on Goldberg than anyone else.

Referring to Cline’s Sixth District constituents, Bannon asked Cline “where are their heads at” after Trump’s early days in office.

Cline replied, “They could not be more excited about this administration, what it’s accomplished… For whatever their concerns were, they are excited about the steps this administration has taken.”

How Cline reached this conclusion is anyone’s guess. I doubt it’s based on phone calls and emails to his offices. And if he thinks a few selected meetings with mostly sympathetic people are an indication of widespread excitement about what Trump is doing, he needs a reality check.

Some face-to-face town hall meetings with his constituents would likely help with that.

Edinburg, Virginia, is a town of 1,200 in rural Shenandoah County. In the November 2024 election, Congressman Cline carried Edinburg by a nearly 3-to-1 margin.

On Thursday the Shenandoah County Democratic Committee held a town hall meeting in Edinburg and invited Cline to attend so he could speak with his constituents face to face.

He declined (or ignored) the invitation, as he has countless other opportunities since his last public meeting in November. But the town hall went ahead without him. More than 100 local residents attended, and many of them took turns addressing a large photo of the absent congressman with their questions and concerns. They all mentioned that (MAGA claims notwithstanding) they were not paid to be there.

Watch it here:

Chris Graham reports at The Augusta Free Press:

A bipartisan group of Virginia lawmakers is pushing back against the Trump USDA’s move to cancel $500 million in funding for food banks.

Not surprisingly, the USDA is not commenting publicly on the cancellation of previously-approved funding through The Emergency Food Assistance Program, which comes on top of the decision handed down from the Trump/Musk DOGE to cancel two Biden-era programs – the Local Foods for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program and the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program – that provided more than $1 billion nationally for schools and food banks to purchase food from local farmers.

The lawmakers made their case in a letter to USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins.

“Through TEFAP, USDA purchases nutritious commodity food from growers and producers, which is then provided to state agencies. Those agencies then deliver that food to distributers, including food banks and community organizations at no cost,” they wrote.

The letter was signed by Virginia’s two Democratic senators, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, as well as by all of the Commonwealth’s Democratic House members. They were even joined by three House Republicans– Morgan Griffith Rob Wittman and Jen Kiggans– not previously known for standing up to any actions by the Trump administration.

And what about our own Ben Cline? His signature was notably absent from the letter, as was that of Republican John McGuire.

It increasingly appears that Cline deathly fears doing or saying anything that might be construed as criticism of Trump– even if it means hurting local farmers and depriving local food banks of necessary commodities. Either that or he is perfectly fine with what Trump is doing.

Probably a combination of both.

Here’s the link.

OK, I get that Congressman Cline’s office is unlikely to have a form letter at hand addressing job losses at the Fish and Wildlife Service. But this one wasn’t even close.