U.S. Rep. Shontel Brown is holding a Social Security town hall Friday in Cleveland in response to concerns from constituents about how Trump administration cuts to the federal program could affect them.

Brown, a Democrat representing Cleveland and East Side suburbs, is holding the town hall with Martin O’Malley, who headed the Social Security Administration (SSA) during the Biden administration. The event will take place from 1 to 2 p.m. at Benjamin Rose, 11890 Fairhill Road, Cleveland. Attendees must register at this link so the organizers can make sure there are enough seats.

In addition to retirement benefits, the federal program issues disability benefits and benefits to surviving spouses and minor children. About 2.5 million people in Ohio receive Social Security, according to federal data. In Brown’s 11th Congressional District, more than 149,000 people are receiving benefits.

In an email to Signal Cleveland, Brown said many of her constituents are worried about what will happen to their Social Security benefits – “and rightly so.” 

“Social Security cannot deliver benefits and properly serve taxpayers without staff, offices, and resources – and Trump is taking that away,” she wrote in an email to Signal Cleveland. “Trump and [Elon] Musk are trying to fire thousands of workers, close offices, and degrade services.”

O’Malley has said in news interviews that the Trump administration’s plan, including cuts that have already been implemented, are so severe that they are beginning to threaten the system with collapse.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) said it plans to cut 7,000 jobs, or 12.3% of the workforce, and close offices across the country. The agency has already laid off employees in the divisions that oversee the website, customer service and benefits information, which have already caused disruptions, national news organizations have reported. For example, a recent Washington Post story described how the Social Security website had frequently crashed, preventing people from accessing their online accounts. Phones kept ringing because there weren’t enough employees to take calls.

Some longtime local Social Security workers are retiring because ‘they’re fed up with how they’re being treated’ 

No Social Security field office closings are planned for Greater Cleveland, though one in Mansfield is slated to close. Layoffs in the Cleveland area haven’t been announced. However, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 3448, which represents about 750 SSA employees in Ohio, is warning of low staffing because of an increase in retirements. 

Union President Michael Murphy said many older employees, who had planned to keep working, are now retiring.

“They’re fed up with how they’re being treated,” Murphy said. “They’ve been demoralized and beaten down by the disruption, and they just don’t want to deal with it anymore.”

Local offices are short-staffed and low on supplies, union says

In February, SSA announced that it would reduce its staff nationally from 57,000 to 50,000. Officials said the staff reductions would come from incentives designed to get employees to resign or retire. People who agreed to retire, for example, were eligible for incentives ranging from $15,000 to $25,000,

Murphy said the impact of job cuts will be great because SSA’s staffing levels are at a 50-year low. He said many of the 56 Social Security offices in Ohio, including seven in Cuyahoga County, have been losing staff for more than a decade. When workers either quit or retire, they have often not been replaced.

“These offices used to have at least 18 to 20 people,” he said. “Now, at all of our offices, half the cubicles are empty.”

The spending freeze led to credit cards SSA issued to local offices to buy stationery and other supplies being cut off, Murphy said. 

“We’ve been scrambling to borrow envelopes and copier paper from other offices in order to perform basic administrative functions,” he said. 

“They just keep trying to starve us,” Murphy said. “I think their idea is to make us look bad so they can say, ‘See, Social Security is not working. We need to privatize.’”

Will there be a delay in Social Security benefits?

Local labor groups have protested the Trump administration plan to reduce the federal workforce here, which was nearly 17,000 employees as of December. They have argued that laying off federal employees, who belong to the civil service system, isn’t so easy because they have certain protections. Several national unions continue to challenge layoffs in the courts.

In an interview with NewsNation last week, O’Malley projected that an interruption in benefits will occur “anytime within probably the next month.” He said in its 90-year existence, Social Security has never missed benefit payments.

Murphy said if residents here don’t receive their monthly Social Security benefits, more than recipients will be impacted.

“It’s going to affect Greater Cleveland’s economy – whether it’s landlords, local stores, restaurants, etc.,” he said. “Are people prepared to take their family members in because they can’t pay the rent?”