Bailout Reaction Crashes House Web Site

The web site of the U.S. House of Representatives has been overwhelmed by traffic and is experiencing serious performance problems in the wake of today’s vote in which the proposed $700 billion financial rescue package went down to defeat.  ”We haven’t seen this much demand since the 9-11 commission report” was posted on the site in 2004, Jeff Ventura, spokesman for the House Chief Administrative Officer, told the AP. “We’re being overwhelmed with Web traffic about the bill.” 

Ventura believes that millions of Internet users went to the House site to try and e-mail their representatives about the bill’s failure, which prompted a record 777-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The computer slowdown is affecting all House-member Web sites, he said. “It’s all tied into one system that is clearly being overloaded at this point,” he said.

Some users are unable to reach the house.gov site at all, while the page loads slowly for others. I tried a moment ago, and it took about 2 minutes to load a page with no style sheets.