Los Angeles  - Banks get it. So do automakers. So why shouldn't the ailing US porn industry also get a government bailout?

That's the reasoning behind an unprecedented request from infamous pornographers Joe Francis and Larry Flynt, who according to celebrity website TMZ. com are heading to Washington to ask Congress for a 5- billion-dollar bailout.

Francis, creator of the notorious Girls Gone Wild video series, and Larry Flynt, legendary founder of porn mag Hustler, claim that porn movie sales went flaccid last year, plunging 22 per cent amid the limp economy.

"With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is the farthest thing from their mind," Flynt is quoted as saying on TMZ. "It's time for Congress to rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America."

TMZ quoted Francis as saying: "Congress seems willing to help shore up our nation's most important businesses; we feel we deserve the same consideration."

The duo are adamant that the industry will have the staying power to survive - thanks largely to surging web site traffic. But nothing less than the country's health and future demographics are at stake, they claim.

"People are too depressed to be sexually active," Flynt said. "This is very unhealthy as a nation. Americans can do without cars and such, but they cannot do without sex." (dpa)