Caffeine Abstraction Lab

The Honorable Kay Bailey Hutchison became the first woman ever elected to represent Texas in the U.S. Senate. This took place back in 1993; and since then, Hutchison has worked hard to become the fifth-highest ranking Republican Senator nationwide with an approval rating of seventy percent. Hutchison has truly played a vital role in representing Texas in congress. It is for this reason and many others that I am truly grateful to have interned with Senator Hutchison and her congressional staff for the past two months.

Senator Hutchison has many offices all throughout Texas and in Washington, D.C. Senator Hutchison works from the Washington, D.C. office while she is in session at the Senate. While the senator is not in session in Washington, D.C. she is traveling all throughout Texas to her different offices, which all specialize in different specific issues. I was fortunate enough to work in the Houston office. The Houston office deals with issues with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Department of Labor (DOL), Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), Texas Workers’ Compensation Commission, and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). I had heard of all of these organizations before, but had never truly understood them until I read about them everyday as I helped with casework.

Helping with casework was a fantastic learning experience. The caseworkers in each office contact different government agencies for the Texan constituents on Senator Hutchison’s behalf. If a constituent has an issue at work such as believing that they were fired from a job due to racial discrimination, then they contact the caseworker who then contacts the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to resolve the issue. Casework is a big part of what the office does because it can play a huge part in helping out Texan constituents. Having a senator, especially one as powerful as Senator Hutchison, back you up in a difficult situation really has a huge pull. As part of my job as an intern, I read through all the cases that the constituents sent in and filed them into different categories according to the specific government agency that they fell under. I also closed cases. To close a case, I would read through all the documents and write up the complaint and what the government agency did about it. Doing casework like this everyday really helped me understand the different government agencies and how exactly they work. Reading some of the constituents’ stories also made me realize the discrimination and assault that is still happening in the everyday workplace. Not only did I read all about different cases, but I also talked to people on the phones about them.

Answering the never silent phone in Senator Hutchison’s office was another major duty of mine. Many people would call in an tell me all about an injury they had gotten from work or how they had run out of their medicine and were having trouble with their Medicaid. Unfortunately, the only thing I could do for them was to direct them through going on the Internet and filling out a privacy release form and sending that into the office so that our caseworker could help them. Many people I talked to did not have access to the Internet, and so I would take down their address and send them a privacy release form. However, many of these people needed help immediately; so it was sometimes difficult for me to tell them that it would be days before their case was even looked at. A lot of the time I would get yelled at by constituents that claimed they were going to die if they didn’t get their medicine within the next day or by constituents that were stuck in Lebanon; but there was really nothing that I could do. Constituents also called in to vent their opinions about different current events. They would usually call in to ask the Senator to vote for or against certain bills. Twice a day, each office in Texas tallies up its votes and sends it to Senator Hutchison so she knows how the people she’s representing want her to vote. Other constituents would call in to vent about certain issues going on and how the Senator was handling them or complain about how the Senator had previously voted on specific bills. Immigration was the biggest issue that constituents called in about. During the months that I was interning, constituents would call in and tell me about their support for a fence to be put up along the Texas-Mexico border. However, when Senator Hutchison voted against the fence in Congress, people called in extremely upset. The constituents assumed that since Senator Hutchison did not vote for the fence, she was for amnesty. I would try to explain to the constituents that this was not the case and that Senator Hutchison wanted to take the funds that would have been used on the fence and allocate it to other projects that she thought would help the immigration problem more efficiently. Currently, a plan is being voted on in Congress that Senator