House Websites Jammed After Obama Debt Speech

Hugh Pickens writes "CNN reports that House switchboards have been flooded by phone calls — nearly twice the normal average — and hit with an unusual volume of constituent e-mails as voters voice their concern over the worsening debt-ceiling crisis. At least 104 of 279 congressional websites surveyed by CNN were down or had experienced slow connections on Tuesday, after President Obama's speech Monday night. In his address to the nation, Obama called on the American people to 'make your voice heard.' House Speaker John Boehner's website responded with a 'Server Too Busy' or 'Bad Request (Invalid Hostname)' message during parts of the day. His switchboard reported as many as 150-300 callers on hold, wanting to leave their thoughts for the speaker. House Chief Administrative Officer spokesman Dan Weiser said that lawmakers' websites and phone lines began to sag with the traffic on Monday night. 'Last night we had some website problems. ... There was some websites that were hosted by outside vendors that had slowness, sluggishness, people had trouble getting in. And that was rectified early this morning.'"

Re:Rewrite the Constitution or face default!

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't rate you down, nor would I but the pace and phrasing of your post makes your post seem unbelievable or as some kind of crazy rant. I will read the source material you have presented and make my own judgements. These are serious accusations.

But I do agree that the Tea Party Republicans are a problem with their impossibly rigid views and policies. Most, if not all, should be made to rethink their positions by having them voted out of their positions.

too big to fail?

[C0R1D4N]

Our system of government was not setup for this large of a population. When the countru was founded there were many who thought the constittuent:representative ratio was too high and it is faaaar worse now. It is time to dissolve the union and form 50 new nations.

Re:too big to fail?

[Danathar]

Actually, you are almost right. Our system of government where most of the power has been transferred to a central authority away from the states is what does not scale.

Originally the system was designed with Federalism that distributed power. That is almost entirely gone now with nearly all power residing in D.C.

Repeal the 17th Amendment (let states decide for themselves if they want to elect Senators by popular vote in their states, many will do so on their own and some will not)

Get rid of the Federal Reserve system. Competitive banking instead of a monopoly cartel where the same commercial banks who in many circumstances have their CEO's running Federal Reserve regional banks that control the money.

I have no problem with some states being progressive and others being conservative so long as basic negative natural rights are respected and protected by a Federal Authority who's power is primarily that of protecting those rights and common defense.

I'm not insane for wanting what Jefferson and Madison wanted and designed instead of what Alexander Hamilton and John Adams thought would be cool (American Empire)

Re:You've just revealed yourself as an extremist

[Nimey]

HA HA HA HA.

Do you even know what the amending process entails? Hint: you have to get a supermajority of the state legislatures to approve the amendment. Do you have any fucking idea how long that would take? /Years/. We don't have time for that kind of political theater bullshit. If Republicans want that, they should put it out as a separate measure. If the people and their representatives in the states want it, it'll pass on its own merits.

Re:too big to fail?

[trum4n]

Congress should go away. Direct Democracy via the internet. Secure connection to vote with your issued ID as a smartcard style authentication. And before you bash, you know it would work better than the current shitstorm.

Re:And what about contractors?

[smelch]

You're using a lot of scare tactics. Sometimes when a business spends itself in to a hole it has to make cuts and that hurts their employees. Guess what? We aren't living in gumdrop fairy land. A congress was elected with this specifically as its goal: Cut government spending. That's what they're trying to do, and they're being blocked. In their minds the problem of letting this problem go on is greater than the problem of laying off some people for a month. There is no magic bullet that leads to nothing but good. No matter which way we go to settle the debt issue, some people will be effed in the A. Disagree on ideology, but this whole "they're going to put grannies on the street!" scare tactics bullshit doesn't fly with me. I'd rather see politicans willing to make a hard, possibly unpopular, call than pussy-foot around and just spend more and more money, ignoring the problem, until we're unable to pull ourselves out by any means.

This isn't to say the Republicans are right in the legislative track they want to take, but I think holding the debt ceiling as a poker chip is absolutely fair game. Why else would you have a debt ceiling? The other side is exaggerating the consequences by acting as if the worst possible allocation of funds is the only option when it isn't. That's lying to the American public in hopes of scaring them in to a position, and I don't think that is fair game at all. Perhaps you see lying as a valid political tool, and not the process of law. If that's the case, we'll just have to disagree.

Re:Rewrite the Constitution or face default!

[ElectricTurtle]

While I too have a dim view of FDR, and I agree that on the face of it he did precipitate our entry into WW2 by active policy decisions, at the same time do you really support the alternative? Japan attacked the US because the FDR administration would not budge on their efforts to coordinate sanctions against Japan for their activities in China, which were indeed heinous crimes against humanity. Would you rather the US did nothing? Should we have continued to trade with and supply a nation known to be committing a wanton genocide?

FDR was guilty of many detrimental acts toward the American people, things which were so blatantly unconstitutional that he had to threaten to pack the Supreme Court with his own men to get the justices to reach such atrocious decisions as Wickard v. Filburn. However, objectively I'm not sure that many other Presidents would have been able to justify taking a different position toward Japan in terms of trade and diplomacy with conditions being what they were, and as such I cannot fault FDR personally for what more or less anybody would have done.

Re:I couldn't agree with Obama more....

[the eric conspiracy]

Yes. Now what about all the Republicans who cheerfully voted 7 times to raise the debt ceiling when Bush was in power now refusing to do so without massive budget cuts, or in some cases at all.

Hypocrisy is the mother's milk of politics.

Re:Rewrite the Constitution or face default!

[IVI V K]

Interesting comparison, but the big difference is that the time for the US government to debate taxes and spending is when the government passes a budget, not when bills come in.

Congress has already approved this spending, if they want to change it, change the next budget.

What is happening now is pure extortion. Cut our previously agreed to budget (a legal document for the executive branch must follow) or we will destroy the countries credit rating.

Also, Passing a balanced budget amendments would not prevent our current debt.

Since W became president, almost all of our debt is from the following:
1. Reduced tax income from the mortgage crisis recession (unregulated corporate corruption)
2. War spending that was never offset in budgets and intentionally kept separate from the budget process by the Bush Administration.
3. The Bush "Temporary Tax Cuts". These tax cuts were temporary solely to avoid having to pay for them through budget spending cuts.

See the breakdown here: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/07/24/opinion/sunday/24editorial_graph2.html?ref=sunday [nytimes.com]

Each of the items above would be excluded from a balanced budget amendment.

War spending has been excluded from all balanced budget amendments.
Extent of revenue losses during economic downturns also cannot be accurately predicted and will cause deficits.
Lastly, Republicans have always excluded paying for tax cuts through spending cuts, (they prefer to give you the tax cut now and starve the system after you are hooked, kind of like drug dealers the first one is free)