In an effort to combat the worst U.S. financial crisis since the Great Depression, government officials on Sunday unveiled a 110-page, $700 billion bailout proposal that would rescue crumbling financial institutions on Wall Street and implement wide-ranging new regulations.

The plan calls for the secretary of the Treasury to buy toxic mortgage-related assets from ailing financial institutions, restricts executive pay to prevent those companies from profiting from the taxpayer-funded plan, and provides measures to help homeowners with troubled loans and keep them in their houses.

The infusion of cash is designed to help financial institutions resume lending money to potential home buyers, which, in turn, would stimulate the dismal housing market and boost the staggering economy.

Fueled by an epic meltdown in the financial industry, banks and mortgage lenders have spiraled into a tailspin, largely because of bad housing loans to ill-prepared buyers.

“Everybody’s furious and so am I,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, who said the latest plan was far better than the original President Bush proposal. “These bozos, they risked other people’s money and they brought our economy to a very serious situation. This is a massive regulatory failure.”

The agreement, reached Sunday morning, calls for a variety of changes aimed at boosting the economy, and was the result of contentious negotiations between Democrats and Republicans, Congress and the administration, conservatives and liberals — in the midst of a tight presidential race and just weeks before an election.

Around the Bay Area, residents, mortgage lenders and real estate agents were hopeful.

“Without this we will see more financial institutions collapse,” said Stanley Tseng, a mortgage broker and past president of the California Association of Mortgage Brokers, Silicon Valley Chapter. “We need the lending source to be freed up. If they don’t, and continue the way it was going there, there would not be enough buyers to purchase homes and the foreclosure crisis would be deepened.”

Around the Bay Area on Sunday, a steady, but slow stream of people visited open houses. Real estate brokers were optimistic.

“I don’t know if excited is the right word,” said Heather Lange, a Realtor at Intero. “I am angry that taxpayers need to be bailing out lenders on Wall Street.”

She showed a $1.6 million house in Willow Glen on Sunday — to about 10 people. One of them was Sheryl Jackson, a retiree, who was looking to buy her first home.

“At first I wasn’t totally with this bailout,” she said. “But if it gets the banks rolling again. I just want the money when I need it.”

The House was scheduled to take a vote today, followed by the Senate. President Bush is expected to sign the legislation on Wednesday.

Rep. Mike Honda, D-Campbell, was busily reviewing the document late Sunday night.

Whatever is designed and put together, he said, should “put some controls and oversight on a system that appeared to have no oversights and very little regulation.”

The deal came together after a harried round of talks over the weekend. Talks started around 3 p.m. Saturday (East Coast time) in a large conference room in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s suite of offices on the second floor of the Capitol. The first few hours were intense and contentious, marked by occasional shouting matches.

At just before 11 p.m. Saturday, there were three issues outstanding: executive compensation, the makeup of an oversight board and a proposed fee on the financial sector.

But they soon compromised, and the meeting finally broke up about 12:30 a.m. Sunday, when Paulson and lawmakers briefly addressed journalists beneath a statue of Will Rogers. After the historic declarations, Paulson locked arms with Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., and leaned heavily on the senator for support as they walked away.

Melissa Brown, a 23-year-old Sacramento resident visiting San Jose on Sunday, stopped outside a grocery store to ponder the bailout.

Like many Americans, she wasn’t crazy about using taxpayers’ money to buy up messy packages of bad mortgages. But she also sees no other healthy alternative plan.

“It might be the only option,” said Brown, an English teacher, “because financially we are all so inter-connected. .”‰.”‰. And as unfortunate as this bailout is, it may be the only safe solution.”

Mercury News Staff Writer Patrick May and the Washington Post contributed to this report. Contact Joshua Molina at jmolina@mercurynews.com or (408) 275-2002.