Need a Passport? Try Calling Your Congressional Representative.

Slate’s Bruce Reed, who has been chronicling the “Kafka-esque frustration of the passport experience,” reports that one of his readers was told by a passport agent to call her senator to solve her problem getting a passport. “There’s nothing wrong with members of Congress responding to requests to cut through red tape,” Reed writes. “But something is rotten in Washington when the federal agency responsible for the red tape is the one asking.” I’ll go further. Something is rotten when you have to resort to calling your government representative to complete a simple bureaucratic task. The Durango Herald also reports passport seekers getting action by calling their representatives.

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