US President George W Bush has defended his administration's $800bn package to rescue the country's beleaguered financial sector.
The US Treasury is proposing a fund to buy back a large proportion of the bad debt in the US mortgage market.
Mr Bush said the cost to taxpayers from shoring up markets was better than the alternative of job losses and blighted retirement accounts.
Congress leaders have promised swift action on the bail-out package, although some of the details are still being worked out.
The Bush administration is working through the weekend with the Democratic-led Congress to craft the plan.
'These measures require us to put a significant amount of taxpayer dollars on the line. But I'm convinced that this bold approach will cost American families far less than the alternative,' Mr Bush said in his weekly radio address.
'Further stress on our financial markets would cause massive job losses, devastate retirement accounts, further erode housing values, and dry up new loans for homes, cars and college tuitions,' he said.
The plan, which includes a new federal guarantee for money market fund holdings, comes on the heels of an $85bn Federal Reserve rescue of insurance firm American International Group and the treasury's takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Plan goes too far, say critics
Speaking at a White House event with Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe to push for approval of a free-trade agreement, Mr Bush said he initially thought the government could deal with the trouble on Wall Street one issue at time.
But he said the financial 'house of cards was much bigger, and it started to stretch beyond just Wall Street in the sense of the effects of failure. So when one card started to go, we were worried about the whole deck coming down.'
Failure to approve a big rescue package would put hundreds of billions of dollars at risk, he said.
'The problem would spread to the average citizen. This is Wall Street plus Main Street and I'm worried about Main Street.'
Critics said the US government was going too far in bailing out the financial sector.
'The free market for all intents and purposes is dead in America,' said Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky, a member of Mr Bush's own Republican Party.
The Treasury's proposal would 'take away the free market and institute socialism in America,' Sen Bunning said in a statement on Friday. 'The American taxpayer has been misled throughout this economic crisis. The government on all fronts has failed the American people miserably.'
But Mr Bush and supporters of the rescue plan said it would allow financial institutions to resume lending and restore confidence in the financial system.
'In the long term, Americans can have reason to be confident in our economic strength,' Mr Bush said.
'And as we've seen repeatedly over the past eight years, we have a flexible and resilient system that absorbs challenges, makes corrections, and bounces back.'
