Only hours after President Bush hailed a bipartisan agreement, the U.S. House of Representatives rejected a bill providing up to $700 billion to the battered U.S. financial system.

Speaking at the White House this morning, President George W. Bush called the bailout bill “an extraordinary agreement to deal with an extraordinary problem,” CNN reported.

Bush’s initial bailout proposal last week encountered heavy resistance from House Republicans, who objected to the use of taxpayer money to rescue Wall Street from its own mistakes.

But after the proposed bill was modified Sunday to address some of their concerns, House Republican leaders agreed to join in bipartisan support of the bill.

But Republican support for the bill eroded after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi delivered a highly partisan speech during the bill’s debate.

Pelosi said the $700-billion bailout package is “only a part of the cost of the failed Bush economic policies — policies that were built on budget recklessness ... combined with an anything goes economic policy, [that] have taken us to where we are today.”

In the wake of the House vote against the bailout bill, the Dow Jones industrial average plummeted 777 points, the biggest single-day point loss ever.

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