MR. KOJO NNAMDIIt was a call to action that triggered an avalanche. Last week, as Congress and the White House sparred over the debt limit, incoming calls and emails spiked across congressional offices on the Hill, and then President Obama chimed in.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMAIf you want to see a bipartisan compromise, a bill that can pass both Houses of Congress and that I can sign, let your members of Congress know. Make a phone call. Send an email. Tweet. Keep the pressure on Washington, and we can get past this.

NNAMDIThat was the president speaking on Friday, the second time he rallied people to make their voices heard. And by most accounts, the response was both quick and overwhelming. Last week, congressional switchboards were taking 40,000 calls an hour, twice the normal rate of incoming traffic. Speaker Boehner's office averaged more than 300 people on hold at the same time.

NNAMDIMember websites collapsed, and email service swooned. Many Americans complain that Congress is not listening to them, but seen from the other side it's almost impossible to listen to so many voices at once. Joining us in studio is Brad Fitch, president and CEO of Congressional Management Foundation, which focuses on improving congressional operations and enhancing citizen engagement. Brad Fitch, thank you for joining us.

MR. BRAD FITCHThank you, Kojo.

NNAMDIAs we noted, this week, President Obama called on Americans to make their voices heard on the Hill. And by most reports, the response was overwhelming. But we should note that huge a number of people were calling already. And many of those calls before were actually supportive of House Republicans and critical of the president. Either way, this has been an extraordinary week on the Hill. What kinds of reports are you hearing?

FITCHWell, I actually reached out to some chiefs of staff over the weekend and asked them how things were going. And my favorite one came from Rep. Joe Courtney's chief of staff, who said that, during the health care debate, they saw, like, a tripling of their email in one year. Now, it's "settled down" to just a doubling.

FITCHAnd that's really the way it feels. I mean, this has been a phenomenon that has started with the Internet and has been going up exponentially. And in some levels, it's -- you got to say, it's not such a bad thing. We took a survey, a few years ago, of citizens, and we asked, have you contacted your member of Congress within the last five years? Forty four percent of adult Americans reported that they've contacted their congressmen in the last five years.

FITCHOn some level, we're seeing very positive things. Staff and surveys we do say that the Internet and email is making their members more accountable. It's -- social media's allowing them to reach people they didn't reach before. It is deafening to try to, you know, find the signal amidst the noise. But, on some levels, it's actually heartening that people are getting involved and they are contacting their member of Congress.

NNAMDIHave you tried to contact your Congress member recently? Call us at 800-433-8850. Send us a tweet, @kojoshow, email to kojo@wamu.org. Or go to our website, kojoshow.org, and tell us there if you've tried to contact your Congress member recently and what kind of response you get or what kind of response you got.

NNAMDIIt's a refrain you hear time and again when people complain about Congress. It's a common idea, Brad, that Congress doesn't listen. The view from Congress seems to be the opposite. They have so many voices coming at them from mail, phone calls and, most significantly, emails, as you said, it's difficult to identify -- I guess the phrase you used was -- the signal amidst the noise.

FITCHAnd they are trying. I mean, members -- this is one of the myths that exists out there, that members don't listen to their constituents. And I've been working with Congress for 25 years, covering them and also working in Capitol Hill for 13 of those years. They absolutely listen. They try to listen. They try to define public opinion from this mosaic that they get of different messages.

FITCHMembers of Congress are the best pollsters in the world of public opinion because they're the only pollsters, who, if they get the answer wrong, they lose their job. So they have a reinvested interest in trying to define what's going on, and they do pay attention. And social media is the new twist in this. It's really fascinating. We released a study last week at the Congressional Management Foundation -- and it's on our website, congressfoundation.org -- on social media.

FITCHIt's called hash tag socialcongress. And we surveyed congressional staff, and what we found is that they're using Facebook and Twitter, and to a lesser extent, YouTube, as an instant gauge of public opinion. And they're able find -- they didn't have this tool available four, five years ago, where they'll post something on their Facebook page or put on a YouTube video up, they'll instantly public opinion.

FITCHNow, it's authentic. It may not be constituents. But at least it's a -- some gauge of what the public thinks about them and their ideas.

NNAMDIWell, it depends, I guess, on how we define public because, on a typical day or week, a congressional office probably gets a couple dozen or a couple of hundred constituent emails and phone calls. But very few of those communications seem to be spontaneous. What do we know about who contacts Congress and when?

FITCHWell, we did actually do a survey, as I said, a couple of years ago. And when asked why they contacted a member of Congress, over 80 percent of the respondents to the survey said, they did at the request of a third party. Most of the communications that go on between citizens and Congress are spurred on by an association or nonprofit or a corporation or some grassroots organization out there.

FITCHThat doesn't devalue it. In fact, on some levels, it actually increases value because they're aggregating their voice and petitioning their government for a redress of grievances and assembling online, exactly the way the founders wanted them to do. But then you have these times where you do have something that's more spontaneous -- and that's exactly the word -- and, I think, that's we're seeing this week.

FITCHThis was less of an organized group. We saw it healthcare in 2009. We saw it in immigration in 2006. The first time I saw it was in 1989 when Congress proposed a pay increase and...

NNAMDII was about to say pay raise has to come up here somewhere.

FITCHOh, my gosh. It was like there were more interns and staff assistants going home crying that week. I mean, it was just -- you know, it was -- there was blood on the floor. It was really rough. And that was sort of the first rise of the angry white man, you know, when we heard that phrase going in to the 1990 and '92 election.

NNAMDI800-433-8850. Have you tried to contact your member of Congress recently? What kind of response did you get, if? Here is Ellen in Fairfax, Va. Ellen you're on the air, go ahead please.

ELLENHello there. So I'm thinking, "American Idol" has this system whereby people can only call in so many times, and they can call this number to vote for something, and they can call this number to vote for somebody else. Couldn't they use that same technology so the people could call in grassroots without worrying about crashing systems?

NNAMDIBrad Fitch.

FITCHWell, I think limiting the amount and way they communicate to Capitol Hill probably isn't what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they said petition your government for redress of grievances. We're actually working with the Congress and the vendors on the technology side right now in a project to try to improve, frankly, the technical handshake that discusses -- that moves, literally, the data from one place to another.

FITCHAnd part of the challenges is the resources on Capitol Hill. One of the things that people don't realize is -- we've heard about this growth in government. Well, it hasn't happened in the member offices. The last time House members got an increase in their permanent staff, set by law 1974 -- and just to put that in perspective, "The Godfather, part II" was in the theaters, Gerald Ford was president, and gas cost 55 cents a gallon.

FITCHAnd, in fact, the House last year -- or this year imposed a 5 percent cut on the member offices and the committee offices. And in 2012 the speaker has proposed a 6.4 percent cut. So they're going to have to manage all of these communications with probably fewer resources available.

NNAMDIWe're talking with Brad Fitch. He is president and CEO of Congressional Management Foundation, which focuses on improving congressional operations and enhancing citizen engagement. Talking your calls at 800-433-8850. Ellen, thank you for your call.

NNAMDIPerhaps, Brad, the best way of understanding of how congressional officers handle constituent communication and why they handle it the way they do is to understand what the nightmare scenario would be. The nightmare scenario for any member of Congress, a constituent writes a thoughtful original letter, maybe by mail or email. Perhaps it's a senior who's not receiving certain benefits or the mother of a slain soldier.

NNAMDIThat letter is somehow misfiled away with all the spam and astroturf emails. If they miss a letter like that -- and you can explain to our listeners what an astroturf email is. If they miss a letter like that, it can only spend -- spell trouble. But it's really hard, as you pointed out earlier, to recognize that letter if there are thousands of letters that are also masquerading as heartfelt original letters.

FITCHWell, I don't know if we see a lot of masquerading out there. But you have just identified the (word?) scenario. That's exactly what a staffer fears, that someone who, as you pointed out, you know, might be the mother of a slain soldier or somebody who's being thrown out of their house or something, or they're -- you know, because they can't pay their rent or they're being deported.

FITCHAnd the constituent just doesn't know where to send that communication. They send it to the Washington office. They call the Washington office. But, oddly, I would say that -- maybe it's kind of (word?) -- Congressional offices have gotten pretty good about finding those. They have pretty good systems. Remember, you know, the staff that work on Capitol Hill are like the NFL of the administration, of any kind of legislative team.

FITCHThey get to hire the best and the brightest. And they usually are able to sort of weed those out and find those communications and address them as best they can. We estimate that the increase in communications for each individual office is 300 to 600 percent increase in the last few years. And you've mentioned about tens and dozens. They would love to have dozens or hundreds.

FITCHA House office will get anywhere from 6,000 to 7,000 communications a month. A Senate office from a large state will get 25,000 communications a week. That's what they're dealing with. I mean, they're dealing with this huge volume of communications. And, you know, so if people get a -- what seems like a form letter back, it's not because the member didn't care.

FITCHThey're aggregating that data and getting reports to the members of Congress. Most members get some kind of mail report, so they are listening to their constituents. The responsiveness sometimes doesn't always sound like they're listening.

NNAMDIWell, you mentioned earlier, the kind of feedback that we're getting now seems to be more authentic and spontaneous. We've heard about so-called astroturf campaigns, initiatives designed to appear as if they come from the grassroots when, in fact, they're doing the bidding of some powerful lobbying group. How prevalent is astroturfing, especially in the current environment?

FITCHWell, when -- well, you have to keep in mind we -- there is this belief, and congressional staff do believe, that some of these messages are not sent with the knowledge and consent of the citizen. We've been studying this for 10 years. And we haven't found any examples of that happening. Now, do you have third party groups that create websites and then sent emails out? Sure. But the citizen is still taking an action.

FITCHThe citizen is doing something and making a decision to hit send. So you may disagree. Or some people call that astroturf. I mean, if encouraging people to get involved in government is somehow astroturf, then Thomas Paine created astroturf with the creation of "Common Sense" because that was just using modern technology to encourage people, in that particular case, to rise up against the government.

FITCHYes. People are saying, you know, raise taxes or lower taxes or vote this way and vote that way. But, again, it's the citizen who's ultimately making the decision to get involved or not get involved.

NNAMDIHere's an email we got from Brenda, who says, "I tried to contact my representative to voice my disagreement with the direction the state of Indiana was taking during a debate over the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, which, fortunately, was eventually repealed -- no thanks to my state. My message never made it to my representative. A staffer read it and sent me a canned response.

NNAMDI"When I tried to respond, I received the exact same canned response. That doesn't feel like communication to me."

FITCHIt doesn't. And that's the challenge that they're facing. It's because of the volume. I mean, what Brenda doesn't -- may not realize is that that number was counted, is that -- when -- especially when -- if you're phoning or you're sending an email, especially identical form communication, the member is going to get a tally 'cause they're going to try to figure out how many people are really upset with that.

FITCHBut, on the same hand, we have a great anecdote that we heard about Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which reminded me about a couple of college students that used a YouTube Video. And they sent it to their Senator, Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado. Within 17 hours, he had posted a response back on YouTube. You know, so there's some great examples of members really trying to be responsive, whether it's because they're individually tweeting or they are posting their own YouTubes.

NNAMDIWe got a tweet that says, "I've contacted many members of Congress with very positive results. Using my voice on the Hill helped save my life." Which brings us to this: you mentioned earlier, Brad, about how members of Congress do listen. They're really good at polling, and they're really good at, I guess, taking the temperature of their constituents.

NNAMDIBut you actually polled Americans about their perceptions and whether they thought contacting their congressman would do anything. What did you find?

FITCHThey were kind of disappointed. There's a lot of cynicism out in the world there. The free media doesn't help. Hollywood, frankly, does the worst job of explaining how Congress works, with the exception of "West Wing." And I'm still watching the reruns 'cause, you know, I think that is a fair portrayal, at least, of what motivates people in public service.

FITCHI mean, you heard Tom and Jim earlier on the program talk about, you know, people in the federal government and how much they're dedicated to what they do. Congressional staffers and, certainly, members are the same way. And they are a pretty hardworking group of people, too. Some years ago, the Pew Research Center actually surveyed members of Congress. And 75 percent of the members said they worked 70 hours a week or more.

FITCHI mean, the staffers are usually working about 60 hours a week, 50 hours a week on a good week. So they are a hardworking bunch of people. In fact, we're going in the field next week with the first study of work-life balance on Capitol Hill. And we're going to survey congressional staff to sort of understand how this volume and how all of this crashing of different, frankly, workload is affecting them.

NNAMDIWhen a call or email comes into a congressional office, it follows a unique path. The idea is to weed out certain types of communications and identify communications that do indeed warrant a response. The first criterion that all communications must meet -- tell me if I'm correct here -- is that it has to actually come from the home district.

FITCHYes. It has to come from a constituent. And now the technology filters out non-constituent mail. And, you know, I hear people complain about that. Well, they shouldn't be doing that. They shouldn't be filtering them out. We've always had filters on Capitol Hill. We just used to call them interns. You know, they've always filtered out non-constituent communications. And that's what Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Madison set up.

FITCHWe are a representative democracy that's supposed to respond to constituents. And, in fact, the laws and the rules in the House and Senate prohibit members from communicating with -- not prohibit, but, certainly, it makes it difficult to communicate with non-constituents.

NNAMDIWe got an email from Brian in Northwest Washington, who says, "As a resident of the District, I don't have any real voting representation in Congress. So I contacted my representatives from the district I grew up in in Southeast Iowa. I felt like I could make the biggest impact if I hand-delivered a letter to the two Iowa senators and the representative for Southeast Iowa."

NNAMDI"But when I got to the Hart Office Building, I was directed to the Capitol receiving station a block away, where I had to go through a series of steps of identifying myself and making sure my letters didn't contain any powders or other bad things. I can only hope that my letters were received and read. I haven't heard anything since dropping them off on Wednesday."

FITCHYeah, isn't that amazing that -- and this is what we try to communicate to members of Congress. And some of them are recalcitrant. Some of them are resisting, you know, using the Internet to communicate to our -- their citizens. We do an annual -- or biannual analysis of the best websites on Capitol Hill called the Congressional Gold Mouse Awards. And we're going to be issuing them in November this year.

FITCHAnd we've got a competition going on right now. And I've got four hardworking research associates that are getting bleary-eyed looking at websites these days 'cause they're using the criteria. And we're finding that, you know, still about one in five offices get an F. And they aren't using the best technology to communicate.

FITCHAnd that's really disappointing and frustrating in today's day and age because I think, frankly, with the budget cuts that they're going to be looking at in 2012, they're going to have to embrace it because it's less expensive than sending and printing a letter and sending it in the mail.

NNAMDIHere is Ted in Richmond, Va. Ted, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

TEDHi. Thank you for taking my call. I contact my members of Congress with regularity. Most recently, I contacted Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia. And he responded via traditional mail. And his response was very thorough and addressed exactly what his plans and intentions were with the debt ceiling negotiations that were going on. And I usually do have pretty good results from both my senators and my representative here in Virginia.

NNAMDIJust curiosity, Ted, were you in agreement or against with the congressman's proposals for the debt ceiling?

TEDWell, we differ very much on our political philosophies. But I did appreciate the response. And I would add that, further, I did see him on news media shortly thereafter, commenting specifically on maybe a slight change in direction that he and the Republicans were considering in the House. And I always had good hopes that it could have been, in part, due to my letter. But thanks for taking my call.

NNAMDIWell, it's good that he responds just as well to people who disagree with him as people who don't. Have you ever examined that in how members of Congress response, Brad?

FITCHWe have not. Only anecdotally we've seen that. And what Ted references is the most important thing that we try to communicate to members -- and the good ones do this. You don't need to write a three-page -- they're not looking for a three-page response. And too many of, frankly, the people drafting the legislative correspondence are, you know, trying to impress their bosses with their good writing skills.

FITCHWhat they really just want to see, and the constituent just wants to know, did you hear me? Are you listening? And if they just communicate that, it's going to increase, not only their own credibility with their constituent, it's going to help them politically. And that's what they need to think about when they're communicating to constituents.

NNAMDIYou know whence you speak because you actually started on Capitol Hill as an intern answering constituent communications. Give us a sense of how things were when you were the bottom of the hierarchy, so to speak.

FITCHWell, by describing the technology, you'll guess how old I am. So, you know, I'm working with an IBM Selectric. And I've got a notebook that is alphabetized with different issue positions from, you know, animal rights to, you know, health care. And my job was to take these paragraphs and retype them, dependent upon what the legislative correspondent had directed. That was on a good day.

FITCHOn a bad day, I was in the basement of the Rayburn Building with an autopen, a windowless little basement and had -- you know, the little pen goes over and over. I did that, and that was in the afternoons, yeah.

NNAMDIWell, you work now with Congress on both sides of the aisle. You examine best practices when it comes to running a congressional office. It seems to turn out that these new communications technologies are presenting all kinds of challenges to Hill staffers.

FITCHChallenges, but opportunities as well. In our survey, that we just released last week and we asked them how important are the following, for understanding constituent views and opinions, 64 percent said they used Facebook, and they thought it was important or very important for understanding views and opinions.

FITCHNow, it hasn't supplanted traditional media or town hall meetings, although one thing that's really come on the scene -- and I heard this from a lot of staffers -- is telephone town halls. These are -- it's a new technology, and they can scale it. And they can get up to 20 -- up to a thousand people into a telephone town hall. And it's a wonderful way for a member of Congress to communicate to large numbers of their constituents.

NNAMDIHere is Patricia in Springfield, Va. Patricia, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

PATRICIAHi, Kojo. Thank you for taking my call. I just wanted to let you know, last year, my husband and I were close to foreclosure, and we were going through the home loan modification with Bank of America. And it was really difficult. So we contacted our Congressman Gerry Connolly. And I actually sent a letter. I mailed a letter 'cause I thought I'd have an easier time getting through that way. And I heard back from them within two days.

PATRICIAThey called us. They got on the phone with us and Bank of America. And they, you know, talked to them. They did some negotiating. And we had so much trouble. This went on for months and months. But, all along, the congressman's office was in contact with us, and they seemed to, you know, be very concerned and very responsive. I was very pleased with their support. Whether it helped or not, I don't know.

PATRICIAWe ended up doing a short sale, in the end, to avoid foreclosure. But I just wanted to let you know that that's one case where I was very pleased with the response.

NNAMDIOh, thank you so much for sharing that with us. Care to comment on Patricia's call?

FITCHWe see a lot of that. I mean, this is what the people don't understand, is that members of Congress have really big hearts. They want to please everyone. I did an interview for my book. I wrote a book last year called, "Citizen's Handbook to Influencing Elected Officials." And one member said to me during the interview, I think that all politicians and members of Congress are just middle children still trying to please their father.

FITCHAnd so they want to say yes, and they want to help you. That's why they got involved in this. And that's why their staff members got involved, too, so they can really make an honest difference in the world.

NNAMDIAfraid we're just about out of time, but I do have to note that we got quite a large number of emailers and Twitter users pointing out that D.C. residents don't have the same right as everyone else because we have one non-voting representative in only one House of Congress and therefore, arguably, we have less voice than anybody else when it comes to influencing these debates.

NNAMDIBrad Fitch is president and CEO of the Congressional Management Foundation, which focuses on improving congressional operations and enhancing citizen engagement. Brad Fitch, thank you so much for joining us.

FITCHThank you, Kojo. It was great.

NNAMDIAnd thank you all for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.