Obama group passes 300,000 calls for health care

Pro-Obama groups said this morning they ended up at 315,023 calls to Congress on Tuesday pushing the health care overhaul, tripling the original goal of 100,000.

The massive effort was put together by Organizing for America, the president's grassroots group from the campaign. (Click here for updates.)

"As you know, we set a big goal: 100,000 calls to Congress placed or committed to in a single day by OFA supporters and allied organizations. By 2:30 p.m., you had crushed it. So, we gulped and said let's go for 200,000, not knowing what would happen. But the calls just kept pouring in -- keeping phones ringing off the hook in congressional offices in D.C. and your representatives' district offices around the country," the group's national director, Mitch Stewart, told supporters this morning.

"Then, OFA supporters gathered in over 1,000 living rooms and community centers from Macon, Georgia to Missoula, Montana. You called hundreds of thousands of key voters in your community and got them to agree to call Congress and speak out for reform, too. President Obama joined in at a call party in New York -- and he had some amazing words of support for the folks like you who make this movement possible."

Obama, himself, addressed thousands of supporters who are making calls via live webcast Tuesday night from the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City, where 2,500 people will be making similar calls in support of reform.

"You know why this is so important," he told them. "You know premiums have doubled over the past decade."