Americans are pounding the Capitol Building switchboard

Phone Calls Continue to Batter Congress

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 isn’t the first time Congress has been overcome with phone calls and e-mails in the runup to an important vote. Interest in the 2008 stimulus bill crashed House.gov and some Member Web sites, and in November, the Senate’s voice mail system was overloaded before the chamber’s cloture vote on health care reform legislation.


“It’s hard to predict the interest in this kind of legislation,” Ventura said. “I mean it’s historic. Here you have piece of legislation that is so defining, it’s just causing massive interest.”

Oh is that all? It's all just interest right? Because people love to call in in droves when they are happy about something?

Massive interest my foot. More like massive DISinterest. Or massive pissed-offness if you want to be blunt. Who does this imbecile Ventura think he's kidding? Just like in 2008 when the stimulus bill came to be, Americans hated it and bombarded the Capitol's phonelines. And now as the abomination of socialized medicine is about to strangle America's throat, people are once again letting those in Congress know! Massive interest. What a politically correct boob. Deep down he knows what's happening.

Here's the number to call: 1-877-762-8762 (1-877-SOB-U-SOB) Now isn't that fitting?