US President George W. Bush urged Congress on Monday to approve his 700-billion-dollar debt bailout plan to end the financial crisis.
"Americans are watching to see if Democrats and Republicans, the Congress and the White House, can come together to solve this problem with the urgency it warrants," President Bush said in a statement.
"Indeed, the whole world is watching to see if we can act quickly to shore up our markets and prevent damage to our capital markets, businesses, our housing sector, and retirement accounts," said President Bush.
He warned that failure to act "would have broad consequences far beyond Wall Street." "It would threaten small business owners and homeowners on Main Street," he noted.
The rescue plan, part of the government's largest financial bailout since the Great Depression, would give the administration broad power to buy the bad debt of any US financial institutions for the next two years.
It also would raise the statutory limit on the national debt from 10.6 trillion dollars to 11.3 trillion dollars in order to make room for the massive rescue.
Some lawmakers insisted that government should get a stake in the companies helped by the unprecedented rescue.
Taxpayers should be "first in line" to get money back once conditions in the industry stabilize and recover, said Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd on Monday.