WASHINGTON - Americans' anger is in full bloom, jumping off the screen in capital letters and exclamation points, in the e-mail in-boxes of elected representatives in the nation's capital.
"I am hoping Congress can find the backbone to stand on their feet and not their knees before BIG BUSINESS," one correspondent wrote to Rep. Jim McDermott of Seattle.
"I'd rather leave a better world to my children - NOT A BANKRUPT NATION. Whew! Pardon my shouting," wrote another.
McDermott is a liberal Democrat, but his e-mail messages look a lot like the ones that Rep. Candice Miller, a conservative Republican from Michigan, is receiving. "NO BAILOUT, I am a registered Republican," one constituent wrote. "I will vote and campaign hard against you if we have to subsidize the very people that have sold out MY COUNTRY."
The backlash, in phone calls as well as e-mail messages, is putting lawmakers in a quandary as they weigh what many regard as the most consequential decision of their careers: whether to agree to President Bush's request to spend an estimated $700 billion in taxpayer money to rescue of the financial services system.
Around the country, Republican and Democratic voters are rising up in outright opposition to the White House plan or, at the very least, to express concern that it is being pushed through Congress in haste.
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