By Matt Holdridge
From Roll Call:
Members continued to be inundated with phone calls from constituents and interest groups Friday thanks to an impending vote on health care reform this weekend.
Calls to the House numbered close to 100,000 an hour, creating a bottleneck in a phone system only meant to handle 50,000 calls an hour. The chamber has been similarly overloaded for four consecutive days, beginning on Tuesday when radio host Rush Limbaugh told viewers to call the Capitol switchboard phone number.
Jeff Ventura, spokesman for Chief Administrative Officer Dan Beard, said the problem was essentially unsolvable. The issue lies with the capacity of the cables buried underneath the Capitol complex — and even if those could be dug up and replaced, Members simply don’t have enough staff to answer so many calls, he said.
“Our capacity rate is about 50,000 calls an hour, and once we hit the 40,000 mark, we start to get these signals,” he said. “We’re beyond that. There’s no other way to say it other than the system is at capacity.”
This means call your representative’s district office or make a personal visit!
Also, encourage the people in your circle of influence to do the same. Now is the time to pull out the stops!