Code-ing

A couple of house keeping items, SCHIP and TARP came up in an earlier blog, here are some relevant links for more info.

SCHIP

TARP

"write your congressman" that's what your told if you have an issue with something the government is doing...or not doing. Each congressman has about 650,000 people in their district. So when you stop and think about how many people can actually write their congressman it adds up. Don't take me wrong it's important to voice your opinion. one of the office staffers/interns will be there to read that opinion and enter it into the impressive database we use to track these things. I'm just amazed by the number of faxes, emails and letters we get on a daily basis. Alot of the mailings are form letters put out by various interest groups and used by constituents. There are many more publications/mailings put out by organizations. But even with all of these there are still a lot of personalized letters.

My job today consisted largely of reading each letter and code-ing it, ie. is it personal and requires follow-up, is it an organizational mailing and goes to a staffer, or is it a form letter about X issue. If it is a form letter we determine what issue it pertains to and then put a code on it and put it in the database, this makes follow-up not only easier but, due to the shear volume of letters, feasible.

Besides Code-ing, I spent some time on the phone following up on constituent tour requests. As I learned today not only does our office handle Capitol tours and White House tours, we can also set up Library of Congress and Supreme Court tours. Even though DC is an exciting and new experience to me, I forget just how exciting it is to come here for the first time. One of the tour requests was so excited to hear from the office and to be coming to DC, that was a fun phone-call. I also got to run a letter over to the minority Whip's office...which is on the 3rd floor of the capitol. I thought getting lost wandering the streets was easy...then I tried the capitol building...fortunately I made it.

The random piece of trivia... The minority Whip's office has Starbucks coffee in their carafes.

and as for that big news...hang in there...