Barack Obama urged citizens to contact their members of Congress and urge action on the debt limit in his prime-time address last night, and that plea is apparently yielding dividends:

House telephone lines are still jammed this morning after President Barack Obama urged the public in his speech last night to contact their members of Congress on the debt-ceiling gridlock.

An e-mail from the House Call Center shortly before 10 a.m. says House phone lines are near capacity, leading callers to sometimes get a busy signal.

Last night, several House and Senate websites crashed after Obama’s prime-time speech had concluded. Many lawmakers urged constituents to contact them via Twitter because of downed websites.