Writing to congress

Back in May, I wrote a letter (well, an email) to my senator. Senator Durbin is on the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform which will make recommendations to congress later this year on ways to cut the deficit. I sent him a letter asking him to aggressively pursue bipartisanship and talking a bit about my experiences with austerity (not saying that mine is an extreme case, but I wanted to give it a personal touch).

I received an initial response (the "AutoReply" subject line and "Dear friend" salutation were telling warnings) on May 3rd thanking me for my comments and telling me that his staff reads all messages and it assured me that they would "provide a response as soon as possible." Apparently August 25th was as soon as possible. That's 114 days. (On the plus side, this one had my name in the salutation).

I had long since abandoned hope of receiving a reply, and I have to say that at 231 words, including 67 words stating his beliefs on the issue was pretty impressive. He even assured me that he "will keep [my] concerns in mind" and invited me to "keep in touch." So I replied on August 28th. I'll let you know when I get a reply.

For comparison, this post is 231 words and the third paragraph is 67 words.