U.S. House faces bailout e-mail crush

WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 (UPI) -- The U.S. House, swamped by constituent e-mail on the financial crisis, has instituted controls to prevent its Web site from crashing.

Some writers may get a "try back later" response if they use the House.gov Web site during peak hours to contact lawmakers about the failed $700 billion bailout plan for financial markets The Hill reported Tuesday.

The House defeated the proposal 228-205.

"We were trying to figure out a way that the House.gov Web site wouldn't completely crash," said Jeff Ventura, a spokesman for the Chief Administrative Office, which maintains the House site and member e-mail services.

"It was a question of inconveniencing everybody or inconveniencing some people some of the time, while servicing other people the other half of the time," Ventura told the Washington publication.

The automatically generated response reads:

"The House of Representatives is currently experiencing an extraordinarily high amount of e-mail traffic. The Write Your Representative function is therefore intermittently available. While we realize communicating to your Members of Congress is critical, we suggest attempting to do so at a later time, when demand is not so high. System engineers are working to resolve this issue and we appreciate your patience."