Call Your Members of Congress about Raising the Debt Ceiling

Regardless of whether your members of Congress are Republicans or Democrats, taking the world’s economy hostage in a desperate attempt to impose their anti-democratic desires on us or sane and wanting to keep the world’s economy functioning, or silently going along with the hostage takers because they fear being primaried or threatening to scuttle the deal because it isn’t a clean bill. Whoever or whatever that rascal of yours in Congress is, you call them!

To paraphrase George Wallace: Call them today, call them tomorrah, call them forevah!

A couple of years ago when the Republicans held Congress, Ye Olde Blogge regularly put out information about important bills to call your MoC about. It culminated in the 2020 election with instructions about contacting the Trump administrator of the Government Services Administration, Emily Murphy, about ascertaining that Biden and Harris won the 2020 election and releasing funds to begin the transition.

Well, I guess we need to trot out those numbers, links, and scripts again because our wavering quavering Members of Congress are not quite sure of how to vote on this one: do we vote no and plunge us all into an irreversible decades long catastrophe that will kill millions, or do we vote yes for an imperfect compromise that will allow us all to live and fight another day? Hmmm… destroy the world as we know it or preserve it, even though it isn’t perfect, so we can change it later. Such a hard choice. How does one decide?

Maybe their constituents can help — that’s you!

Five Easy Steps

FIRST. Decide who you’re going to contact. In this case, your representative in the House and your two senators in the Senate. Only call people you are a constituent of. It is tempting to call others, especially some of the better known irritants on the other side, but don’t. They don’t care what you think. You’re just wasting time, money, energy, and tying up a phone line for no good reason. It really is about their constituents. Use the Find Your MoC list of links below to do so. It’s really easy. They all work. I just checked ’em.

SECOND. Be prepared.

• Write out a brief script about why you’re calling. Write the greeting, the part where you thank whoever answers for taking your call, and then a brief statement saying you want the debt ceiling raised. You don’t really want any more than that. You can use the script below if you want.
• Call during business hours in the time zone you’re calling. For example, if you’re calling DC you want to know the local time there. It’s confusing, so you may want to use a time zone converter website or app to be sure.
• Be polite. I cannot emphasize this enough. The person who answers the phone is a human being, likely an intern, and just doing their job. Yelling and cussing will just get you hung up on and won’t influence your MoC any more or less. It will just traumatize the person on the other end of the line. We don’t want that, really we don’t.
• If you get an answering machine, leave a message. If it is full, then consider other options listed below.

THIRD. Decide if you want to take further action like social mediaing your MoC, writing a letter, post card, or email to them, or writing a letter-to-the-editor for a news publication.

FOURTH. Consider joining a political group near you. The local chapter of the Democratic party, Indivisible, a BLM chapter, Mothers Demand Action, there are lots of them.

AND FIFTH. Tell us how it went in the comments. I’d love to hear from you and support you however I can.

The person answering will make a tally mark on this issue. All of them track these kinds of calls.

Script

Adapt this script for phone calls and emails.

Hi, my name is [NAME] and I’m a constituent from [STATE and LOCALITY].

I’m calling today to urge you to support the bipartisan debt ceiling bill. There is no doubt that defaulting on the country’s debt would be a catastrophe. There is no justification for it. This is a bill that will keep us from driving the economy over a cliff. Please support this bill.

Thank you for your time and attention.

IF LEAVING A VOICEMAIL: please leave your full street address to ensure your call is tallied.

Find Your MoC

Get your MoC’s contact information, contact information for other government types, track legislation, and other miscellaneous government type information from the items on this list and from these links.

• Common Cause will give you the names, party affiliation, direct phone number, website link, and social media platforms of all of your federal, state, and local elected officials.
• GovTrack is a comprehensive site of federal and state legislation.
• USA.gov is the official guide to information and services of the US government. This page explains clearly how to contact everyone from the Ol’ Pussy Grabber to your representative to specific government agencies. Through it you can find the following information about your MoC’s:
  • Their phone numbers: DC and state offices
  • Their mailing addresses both in DC and their state offices
  • Official website with their contact page including email, request a meeting, town hall schedules, and social media
  • And, the committees they sit on
• 5 Calls: Sign-up for 5 Calls because they help you contact your member of Congress and keep you abreast of on going issues that are important to you! Now, that is a good deal.
• The Capital Hill Switch Board: (202) 224-3121.

Image Attribution

“receptionist” by cali.org is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.