McCain and Obama accepted Bush's invitation to discuss the proposed $700 billion bailout with him and congressional leaders at the White House, the candidates' aides said Wednesday night.

Also Wednesday night, McCain and Obama said in a joint statement that the bailout plan was "flawed" but that "the effort to protect the American economy must not fail."

"Now is a time to come together -- Democrats and Republicans -- in a spirit of cooperation for the sake of the American people," read the statement, which was released about 15 minutes before Bush made a televised address on the economy.

Earlier Wednesday, McCain announced that he would suspend his campaign to go to Washington and participate in negotiations on the bailout plan, and he called for a postponement of Friday's presidential debate.
His campaign suggested that he would skip the debate if Congress hadn't passed legislation addressing the crisis by then. Obama, however, said the debate in Oxford, Mississippi, should go forward.

"It's my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person will be the next president," the Democrat said in Clearwater, Florida. "It is going to be part of the president's job to deal with more than one thing at once. It's more important than ever to present ourselves to the American people."
The University of Mississippi, the host of Friday's presidential debate, said it is going ahead with preparations for the event.
McCain's suspension of his campaign hours before Bush's address to the nation on the troubled state of the U.S. financial system, a problem for which Bush's administration has proposed having the Treasury Department buy up to $700 billion in firms' troubled assets -- mainly mortgage-backed securities -- whose values declined as the housing market imploded.

The plan's goal is to stabilize the companies and prompt them to lend again.
While McCain and Obama jointly called for bipartisan cooperation on the economic crisis, in a separate statement Obama outlined some principles he said should guide the legislation and called on McCain to support them.

Obama said the plan should help the "millions of families facing foreclosure" and not just Wall Street; create "an independent, bipartisan board to ensure accountability and complete transparency"; have Wall Street repay taxpayers for the bailout; and have an independent, bipartisan board to oversee the bailout.

"This plan cannot be a welfare program for CEOs whose greed and irresponsibility has contributed to this crisis," Obama's statement said.

Before Bush invited McCain and Obama to the White House, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid issued a statement saying that the presidential debate should go on.

"If there were ever a time for both candidates to hold a debate before the American people about this serious challenge, it is now," he added.

McCain senior adviser Mark Salter said that the campaign will suspend airing all ads and all campaign events pending Obama's agreement.

Salter also said McCain called Bush and talked to colleagues in Washington and learned that passage of the bailout plan as it then stood was next to impossible.

Between McCain's announcement and Bush's speech, congressional leaders said progress has been made in negotiations.