Bailout Bill Overwhelmes House Internet Servers
EmailDebate over — and opposition to — the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 has caused such a huge amount of internet traffic to the House of Representatives’ "Write Your Representative" feature this week, the Chief Administrative Officer of the House has been forced to install an electronic traffic cop in the program to tell letter-writers to come back later.
"The House of Representatives is currently experiencing an extraordinarily high amount of email traffic," it reads. "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."
Jeff Ventura, a spokesman for the Chief Administrative Officer for the House of Representatives, tells ABC News that starting Sunday night, when the draft bill of the compromise legislation on the $700 billion bailout bill was posted on line, "immediately we saw a degradation in service."
Normally, Ventura says, "a bill sits out there in the public sphere for awhile. Here there was a limited amount of time for folks to see the legislation."
On Monday, the day of the vote, the House servers "saw a tremendous slowdown in service," Ventura says.
Part of that was people looking at the vote count, but there was also "an extraordinary number of folks going to this application ‘Write Your Representative.’"
What is "extraordinary"?
"Millions," Ventura says. "We haven’t done a statistical bean counting. That’s a bit like looking at a tidal wave, sitting there trying to count the number of drops of in the water before it hits you."
It wasn’t just the Write Your Representative feature that was impacted, it was House.gov, the websites of individual members if Congress, the websites of House Committees. "Once the vote hit, users who went to House.gov experienced an incredible slowness or a blank page," Ventura says.
The site did not crash. "That’s like saying a phone line is dead when all you’re getting is a busy signal," says Ventura.
Last night the Chief Administrative Office had an emergency meeting with technical and computer engineers. They monitored the situation over night, and then again at 6 am this morning. But even at sunrise, "server activity was still off the charts."
The decision was made to add what Ventura calls a "traffic cop," allowing some folks to use the "Write Your Representative" feature, but not enough so as to put the rest of the House server in peril.
Ventura agrees that the House server will have to be upgraded to get accustomed to this level of high traffic. "If this is sort of your barometer of what a landmark legislative event is, clearly you want to scale up to that level," he says, "probably in the not-too-distant future."
- jpt
Rick Santorum Sweeps 3 States 
Pentagon to Open Additional Jobs to Women
Time to upgrade to IBM blade servers.
Posted by: len | September 30, 2008, 5:06 pm 5:06 pm
no len ,its not time to upgrade…
they will be using 2 dixie cups and a long string pretty soon so enjoy the high bandwidth now while you can.
Posted by: bah | September 30, 2008, 5:19 pm 5:19 pm
Democrat Leaders Played to Lose
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordered her Majority Whip, Jim Clyburn, to essentially not do his job in the runup to the vote on Monday for the negotiated Wall Street bailout plan, according to House Democrat leadership aides.
“Clyburn was not whipping the votes you would have expected him to, in part because he was uncomfortable doing it, in part because we didn’t want the push for votes to be successful,” says one leadership aide. “All we needed was enough to potentially get us over the finish line, but we wanted the Republicans to be the ones to do it. This was not going to be a Democrat-passed bill if the Speaker had anything to say about it.”
During the floor vote, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House Democrat Conference chair Rahm Emanuel could be seen monitoring the vote on the floor, and gauging whether or not more Democrat votes were needed. Clyburn had expressed concerns, says the leadership aide, of being asked to press members of the Black and Hispanic caucuses on a bill he was certain those constituencies would not want passed.
“It worked out, because we didn’t have a dog in this fight. We negotiated. We gave the White House a bill. It was up to the Republicans to get the 100 plus votes they needed and they couldn’t do it,” said another Democrat leadership aide.
Emanuel, who served as a board member for Freddie Mac, one of the agencies that precipitated the economic crisis the nation now finds itself in, had no misgivings about taking a leadership role in tanking the bill. “He was cheerleading us along, mothering the votes,” says the aide. “We wanted enough to put the pressure on the Republicans and Congressman Emanuel was charged with making it close enough. He did a great job.”
Pelosi and her aides have made it clear they were not going to “whip” or twist the arms of members who did not want to vote, but they also made no effort to rally any support for a bill they attempted to hijack over the weekend.
Further, according to House Oversight Committee staff, Emanuel has received assurances from Pelosi that she will not allow what he termed a “witch hunt” to take place during the next Congressional session over the role Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac played in the economic crisis.
Emanuel apparently is concerned the roles former Clinton Administration members may have played in the mortgage industry collapse could be politically — or worse, if the Department of Justice had its way, legally — treacherous for many.
Posted by: Kirsten Powers | September 30, 2008, 5:32 pm 5:32 pm
Ironic that the house system falters under what would be called a DOS or denial of service attack if it were malicious.
That’s what the public has been experiencing from the house for the past generation.
Posted by: smith | September 30, 2008, 5:34 pm 5:34 pm
There’s no ‘e’ in ‘overwhelms’.
Seems to me people don’t want this bailout plan. Let’s put it to a national referendum, you know….democracy-style.
Posted by: gramma ray | September 30, 2008, 5:38 pm 5:38 pm
Was the bill to raise government employees pay passed? Is there a raise for congress in that bill?
Based on past action by the house now would be a perfect time to table everything and work out a raise or make some sort of baloney proclamation.
Posted by: smith | September 30, 2008, 5:39 pm 5:39 pm
Heck no, we won’t go.
LONG LIVE DEMOCRACY!
Posted by: sandra pixley | September 30, 2008, 5:51 pm 5:51 pm
YES!!!!!!! no to the Bailout! I experienced that today. if these yahoos do not realize that this is a hustle. They’re either in on it or They’re blind to it.
You broke it, you bought it.
Posted by: Adolf Weismenn | September 30, 2008, 5:57 pm 5:57 pm
Now they’re blaming the internet. Our Congressional leaders failed the test. We’ll survive the economic failure. We may not survive the political failure. Recent events reveal an intolerable level of partisan politics which has resulted in the most dysfunctional Congress in history. A change in leadership is needed.
Posted by: independent | September 30, 2008, 5:59 pm 5:59 pm
It’s called “load balancing”. So are they running that site on ONE server or are they clustering? Hmm… it’s not the bandwidth per se — it’s the high server load!
Posted by: Patrick | September 30, 2008, 6:19 pm 6:19 pm
Did anybody call Al Gore? He might be able to fix it….
Posted by: Wes | September 30, 2008, 6:25 pm 6:25 pm
Wouldn’t you think that congress would get the message? The sad thing is they won’t. They know most of the public doesn’t want this but they think they know what’s best for us. Let’s kick all those bums out of office. Larry, Curly and Moe look like well disciplined and organized executives next to the US Congress.
Posted by: Tedinski | September 30, 2008, 6:35 pm 6:35 pm
“..it’s the high server load!”
Yep. They need blades and someone to tune them. Ask the folks who do multi-user virtual worlds.
BTW: To those who believe it when Obama talks about ‘googling’ and internet-based transparency, this is what happens when it’s done badly, under budget, or by amateurs. This is a whole lot harder than stitching up some HTML and ftping it to a directory.
Posted by: len | September 30, 2008, 6:48 pm 6:48 pm
No matter how they word the economic bailout in the future, we still say NO, so vote against bailing out the rich again and again. If the economy goes down, prices on everything will have to eventually also and that is what American consumers need anyway.
Posted by: jeanete | September 30, 2008, 6:50 pm 6:50 pm
Please don’t vote for Obama.
Posted by: mikeM | September 30, 2008, 6:51 pm 6:51 pm
They’d rather spend 700 Billion Dollars on mismanaged private enterprises than a few thousand on the necessary computing power to facilitate democracy. Well, these idiots are so out of touch with the times they don’t even know how to use computers, right? (I don’t even know how long it’s been since I’ve seen an SHTML file extension on a page anyway.)
Joe Adams administers the servers, according to a Network Lookup. I will e-mail this buffoon and I suggest the rest of you urge him to acquire more servers and cut out this BS to prevent me from telling my Congressional representatives how to represent me.
Posted by: David Rivers | September 30, 2008, 6:59 pm 6:59 pm
In 2005 when the US Senate tried to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (at Bushes’ urging) …. OBAMA SAT BY IN SILENCE AND…. DID NOTHING!! LITTLE WONDER….. OBAMA HAS TAKEN OVER $126,000 in CONTRIBUTIONS FROM BOTH.. FANNIE AND FREDDIE, second highest in Senate, behind Banking Committee chairman, CHRIS DODD!!! Obama accuses the Reps and greedy Wall Street CEOs of getting us into this mess. TALK ABOUT THE POT CALLING THE KETTLE BLACK!!! I wonder how much money McCain took from Fannie and Freddie? You guessed it…….. ZERO, ZILCH, NADA, NOTHING!!!
Posted by: Manitu | September 30, 2008, 7:08 pm 7:08 pm
The rich CEOs of Wall Street either have ALREADY been paid off as they exited from the scene … or WILL BE PAID OFF FROM PREEXISTING clauses in their contracts. As I understand the bill, none would directly benefit from it. Personally, I am on the fence. AS bad is the idea is – IT NEEDS TO BE DONE!! I think that the NO VOTERS in the House did the right thing as there is just too much bad stuff in there and it was pushed upon then TOO FAST!!
Posted by: Temagami | September 30, 2008, 7:27 pm 7:27 pm
“I wonder how much money McCain took from Fannie and Freddie? You guessed it…….. ZERO, ZILCH, NADA, NOTHING!!!”
McCain has raised nearly $189K this year alone from 8 Fannie Mae big wigs in joint fundraising with the RNC.
Posted by: Ryan C | September 30, 2008, 7:58 pm 7:58 pm
I need answers,
Did PBS report that Paulson was worth 500 million dollars.
What is his worth.
If this is true, it is no wonder he wants control of another 700 billion.
Please respond if you know the TRUTH.
Posted by: Underdog | September 30, 2008, 8:04 pm 8:04 pm
Opps,
I just found this link,
why would a guy who made 38 million go to a job paying only 175,000.
make you want to say HMMMMMMMMM..
He signed off on 13 billion in cash to be sent to Iraq and it dissappeared..
Now watch that 700 billion dissapear.
He should be a magician..
I want to go to school at the class of Paulson Univ.
Posted by: Underdog | September 30, 2008, 8:12 pm 8:12 pm
Paulson is stupid as a FOX..
and I take it back that Bush is stupid.
I want to go study these guys.
We are stupid ones.
Posted by: Underdog | September 30, 2008, 8:13 pm 8:13 pm
Paulson states we need this now, or yesterday, when he states he saw this coming.
What he see is coming is an honest man called Obama, and he want to take all the marbles and go home before the game is over.
Now with the monoploy of BANKS, we the people will suffer..
After paying for the bad loan practice that the banks tricked a lot of people with.
Preditory lending.
Posted by: Underdog | September 30, 2008, 8:16 pm 8:16 pm
Paulson is worth 700 million, he want to make that 700 billion
Posted by: Underdog | September 30, 2008, 8:27 pm 8:27 pm
“Please don’t vote for Obama.”
Posted by: Belle Starr | September 30, 2008, 8:55 pm 8:55 pm
@ttn abc
typo: Overwhelmes (“overwhelms”)
Posted by: Spelling Police | September 30, 2008, 9:16 pm 9:16 pm
The Write Your Rep page says:
“The House of Representatives is currently experiencing an extraordinarily high amount of email 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.”
“Intermittently available”? That sounds like it would be an improvement …
Posted by: Belle Starr | September 30, 2008, 9:27 pm 9:27 pm
All senators have at least one state local office, write of call them. Better yet both.
Posted by: Ken | September 30, 2008, 11:25 pm 11:25 pm
I hope the house votes NO! again! I am totally against allowing these rich CEOs to gamble with our money when they are mllionaires and billionares! LET THEM USE THEIR OWN MONEY! By their own admission, “they do NOT know if the bailout will work.” Many of them have stated that they are in “uncharted teritory.” They caused this mess, let them clean it up!
Posted by: Researcher | October 1, 2008, 2:25 am 2:25 am
TAKE 700 BILLION AND INVEST IT IN ALTERNATE ENERGY–AND WE WILL ALL BE A LOT BETTER OFF—–IF I MESS UP I PAY -WHY ARE WE EVEN THINKING ABOUT THESE GUYS—NO BAILOUT PLEASE —MAYBE A FEW ARRESTS AND JAIL TIME.TAKE ALL THESE GUYS HAVE FIRST.WE CAN DO THIS FOR LOSERS BUT THE RESPONSIBLE HARD WORKING CAN GO TO HELL. AND PAY THE BILL
Posted by: rodney | October 1, 2008, 7:44 am 7:44 am
WE DONT HAVE AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE BUT WE CAN BAIL OUT A BUNCH OF THIEVES.
MAYBE WE ALL SHOULD MARCH ON THE CAPITOL
Posted by: rodney | October 1, 2008, 7:50 am 7:50 am
THIS TIME OUR POLITITIONS BETTER LISTEN TO THE PEOPLE—-ALL THE THIEVES ARE GRABBING ALL THEY CAN BEFORE THE ELECTON OF NEW ADMINISTRATION.
Posted by: rodney | October 1, 2008, 7:58 am 7:58 am
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH—LETS SEE HOW MANY HAVE THE GUTS TO JUST SAY—(NO) AND I MEAN BOTH PARTIES.
Posted by: rodney | October 1, 2008, 8:02 am 8:02 am
When the country needs to act on such an important bi-partisan issue, why would Nancy Pelosi insert such demeaning and politically biased rhetoric right before the actual House vote? Stupidity probably!
Posted by: Bob Plotkin | October 1, 2008, 9:23 am 9:23 am
I’m a capitalist. You invest poorly, you go hungry.
Life is tough, it’s even tougher when you’re stupid.
Posted by: Duane | October 1, 2008, 9:57 am 9:57 am
For those of you who do not know, 25% of the SEVEN-HUNDRED-BILLION-DOLLARS is going to foreign investors. Its amazing to me how congressmen are so determined to vote for this bailout, despite the fact that most of their constituents are against it. They act as though we are children who do not know any better and cannot think for ourselves, so they go ahead and make the decision that will benefit them. If the bill passes, it means that we will continue to work our butts off lining their pockets(through taxes) while they use every loophole they can come up with to legally avoid paying taxes.
Posted by: Researcher | October 1, 2008, 11:35 am 11:35 am
I think it is convenient that we cannot get through to write our Representatives on this important issue. The bailout is a pill I can swallow, but once again our government has proven they are not looking out for the American people. If they were, this bill would be about the bailout and only about the bailout. Instead they have taken it from 100+ pages to over 400 pages loading it up with hidden spending and hidden agenda. This year I am voting for ANYONE who isn’t currently in the House. In this case the devil you don’t know has to be better than the devil you have been burnt by over and over and over again.
Posted by: RogerHuston | October 2, 2008, 7:03 pm 7:03 pm
Thursday, 10/2/2008
Vote NO on this bailout nonsense.
700 Billion + is too much.
You could bail out the people on Main St. for much less $$$$
Posted by: Linda | October 2, 2008, 7:53 pm 7:53 pm
The 10 amendment to the constitution of the United States has been ignored (called treason) with the government turning us into the Ununited Socialist States of America. They should be tarred, feathered and shipped off to Cuba.
Posted by: R Allen | October 3, 2008, 3:16 pm 3:16 pm