US presidential election candidate John McCain said tonight he would be suspending his election campaign to help with negotiations over the Bush administration’s $700 billion bailout plan.
The Republican senator also called for the first televised debate with his Democrat opponent Barack Obama, due to be held on Friday night, to be rescheduled.
Mr McCain, in a statement to reporters, said he would suspend his campaign tomorrow to return to Washington DC and called on Mr Obama to join him.
He said he did not believe the rescue plan would pass the US Congress in its current form. He urged President George W. Bush to call for a bipartisan meeting of lawmakers to try to find an agreement.
"It's time for both parties to come together to solve this problem," he said.
The Obama campaign later said the two senators had spoken today and would issue a joint statement calling on Congress to act.
The debate on Friday in Oxford, Mississippi, is supposed to be the first of three face-to-face sessions between Mr McCain and Mr Obama.
"I am directing my campaign to work with the Obama campaign and the Commission on Presidential Debates to delay Friday night's debate until we have taken action to address this crisis," Mr McCain said.
Mr McCain said it was essential to pass legislation to deal with what he called a "historic crisis."
"If we do not, credit will dry up, with devastating consequences for our economy. People will no longer be able to buy homes and their life savings will be at stake," he said.
Wall Street is seeing a second day of political wrangling over a proposed $700 billion bailout for troubled banks, as billionaire Warren Buffett gave the transformed fiscal landscape a vote of confidence with a $5 billion investment in embattled banking titan Goldman Sachs.
The turmoil has become the top campaign issue in the November 4th US presidential election. And with many members of Congress also fighting to retain their seats, Congressmen are reluctant to merely rubber-stamp the Bush administration's plan.
President George W. Bush will make a televised address to the country tonight on the economy and the financial rescue plan, the White House said today. "The president wants to talk directly to the American people" about the plan, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
Earlier today, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke offered his bleakest outlook since the credit crisis set in last year, saying global markets were under "extraordinary stress" and threatening an already weak US economy.
"Action by Congress is urgently required to stabilize the situation and avert what otherwise could be very serious consequences for our financial markets and for our economy," he said on the second day of testimony aimed at persuading sceptical lawmakers of the need for a rescue plan.
Mr Bernanke ticked off areas of the economy that are struggling in a month of turbulence marked by the US government's takeover of mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and bailout of insurer American International Group Inc, and the bankruptcy of investment bank Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.
But as Mr Bernanke and the Bush administration ramped up their campaign to persuade the US Congress to accept a rescue plan to steer the world's largest economy out of its worst crisis since the Great Depression, Mr Buffett signalled continued concern, saying markets remained in a "dangerous situation."
"I am to some effect betting on the fact that the government will do the rational thing and act properly," Mr Buffett, one of the world's richest men and preeminent stock-pickers, told CNBC.
US Senator Charles Schumer said top Democrats in Congress were committed to passing some sort of emergency measure before lawmakers adjourn in the next few days. "The consensus is: A, people don't like it; B, it will have to change; and C, we have to do something," Mr Schumer said on CNBC. "I certainly think we'll get it done before we adjourn. The odds are very high that it will happen."
US stocks prices opened higher, emboldened by Mr Buffett's investment in Goldman Sachs Group Inc, but then seesawed in later trading.
"When one of the highly respected value investors puts up that amount of money, it suggests, on the surface, that when Buffett jumps in the pool others may follow," said Andre Bakhos, president of Princeton Financial Group in Princeton, New Jersey. "That says to investors that all is not lost."
Other nations braced for fallout from the crisis. Business confidence weakened in Germany, France and Italy in September, surveys showed, stoking fears that the euro zone is sinking into recession as the effects of US financial market turmoil spread.
But EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said the European Union does not need a US-style plan to buy up toxic assets with public money to restore confidence. "The situation we face here in Europe is less acute," Mr Almunia told the European Parliament.