Partisan Switchboard?

Let’s say you want to call your Congressman or Senator in Washington D.C. to express your opinion on a political issue of interest to you.

No problem. You can simply call 1-800-828-0496 which is the main switchboard number for the entire Congress, the Senate and the House of Representatives and asked to be connected to your elected official’s office.

The last thing you should be expecting is to call this number and receive a partisan message supporting a proposed political policy that is currently being debated across the nation, right?

Unfortunately, prior to being transferred to an operator, all callers to this general number receive the following message.

“Thank you for calling your Representatives and Senators, Please urge them to vote YES on Health Insurance Reform, because the American people can no longer wait for more choices, lower costs and coverage we can count on.”

Keep in mind that this is the phone number for all of Congress, not an some partisan activist's number to promote policy.

I wonder how many citizens may have called their elected officials using this number to urge their representative or senator to vote against the present health care policy being pushed by President Obama and then hung up in disgust upon hearing this partisan message in support of same. If you are hearing this message before even speaking to your representative, you have to figure you are simply wasting your time.

If the Republicans had used a similar message to push for Social Security reform during the previous administration, the mainstream media would have been screaming to the high heavens decrying the violation of the non-partisan requirement regarding the use of federal (taxpayer) funds!

Of course that was then and this is now. You won’t hear a thing about this misuse of federal funds from our liberal media.

This Health Care promotional message has been on the Congressional switchboard for several days now; however, I expect it will be quietly removed before the weekend is over.

(Note: I called this number this morning at 6:30 am and, after listening to this partisan advertisement, I left a message for Congressman Anthony Weiner and Senators Chuck Schumer and Kristin Gillibrand asking for an explanation as to how this message came to be posted on the Congressional main switchboard with an accompanying request that they remove it immediately.)

Peter J. Mahon