http://www.rollcall.com/news/44382-1.html?type=aggregate_friendly
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.
Officials expect calls to taper off after the House’s scheduled Sunday vote on the health care reform package. But Ventura emphasized that the system for staffers’ BlackBerrys and smartphones was running smoothly.
“It’s not like Congress has come to a communication standstill,” he said.
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
