Constituents Jam Phone Lines to Congress

WASHINGTON —  Had trouble calling your members of Congress on Wednesday?

So did a lot of other people.

Constituents complaining about the government shutdown and partisan quarreling over the budget jammed phone lines at the Capitol, making it difficult to reach anyone there.

Callers frequently were rebuffed by a recorded message:

“We’re sorry. All circuits are busy now. Will you please try your call again later?”

House operators were flooded with as many as 54,740 calls an hour, said Jim Lafferty, spokesman for the House administrative office that oversees phone service.

And that didn’t include the calls that weren’t connected.

Administrators responded by bringing to work more operators to handle a volume of phone calls that tripled the number logged on the previous Wednesday, he said.

Long-distance lines were the busiest, with AT&T; calls 457% above normal levels and MCI calls 364% above normal. E-mail messages were running at “136% of what we were doing last week,” the spokesman said.