WASHINGTON — Even before yesterday’s House defeat of a $700-billion rescue of the financial system became official, Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy pointed to the key barometer outside Washington as evidence that his vote in favor of the losing package was the right thing to do.

“The market is down 300 points in the last two minutes,” Kennedy said as the tally on the wall of the House chamber showed a still-mounting majority of votes against the rescue package. The final vote against the plan was 228 to 205. The day’s final decline in the Dow Jones industrial stocks was a record 777 points.

Rep. James R. Langevin, who also joined the majority of House Democrats in voting for the rescue plan, likewise reacted with alarm to its defeat. “We are now skydiving without a parachute,” Langevin said. “I just hope we land on something soft.”

Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse issued statements calling for continued efforts to solve the problems in the financial markets.

Kennedy and Langevin spoke in the lobby outside the packed House chamber as legislators absorbed the dimensions of the defeat for the congressional leadership and for the Bush administration. Both Democrats reiterated that, like many colleagues on both sides of the aisle, they had two fundamental reasons for deciding to cast a difficult vote for a rescue package that was unpopular with many constituents.

First, they accepted the judgment of market experts and top Bush administration officials — including Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson — that inaction would permit the unfolding of an economic crisis that could have harsh effects on their constituents, perhaps including a widespread loss of jobs, savings and credit.

Second, Langevin and Kennedy said they believed congressional leaders had exacted from the Bush administration important concessions that made the compromise rescue package a great improvement over what Paulson had initially requested early last week. Among other elements of the compromise, they applauded provisions to curb “golden parachutes” and other forms of high payment to executives of companies participating in the federal rescue; efforts to hold the cost of the rescue far below the $700 billion limit; independent supervision of the Treasury’s execution of the rescue; and a mechanism to give the taxpayers an ownership stake in firms that sell bad assets to the government under the rescue plan.

“Unfortunately, the president hasn’t done a good job of explaining” the need for the rescue, Kennedy said.

“You’d want to prevent a crisis before your constituents had to feel it,” Kennedy said, “but maybe now we are going to have to find out the hard way.”

With further action in the House unlikely until at least Thursday, Kennedy said he believes that “we’ve got to come back right away and get something else going.”

If the market continues to signal that the financial crisis will inflict pain on ordinary Americans, Kennedy said, he hopes that “those who are ideologically opposed are going to be looking at the pragmatics” of passing a new compromise rescue package. “We’re not in the business of Democrat or Republican anymore. We’re all in this together,” he said.

Langevin concurred. “I am fearful that, without this type of package that was put together, our entire economic system could be on the verge of collapse,” he said.

Speaking of the opponents who defeated the compromise, Langevin said, “We’ll all have to just hope that the people in the prevailing side were correct and the problems will just work themselves out.

“I suppose that’s why some people play the lottery. In this case, I hope they’re right and, at the end of the day, I hope America wins.”

Reed’s statement said the rescue bill died in the House because Mr. Bush did not “generate support from his own party, and more importantly, from the American people.”

Reed, a Senate banking committee member who was active in the negotiations, said, “We worked hard to transform the blank check the president sought with a more responsible plan that increased protection for taxpayers. But that effort was clearly affected by the injection of presidential politics.

“The task before us now is to get back to work, protect people’s jobs and retirement savings, and do our level best to craft a solution to the credit crisis that can garner greater support in Congress and from the American people.”

Whitehouse had decided before yesterday’s House vote to support the compromise, according to his office. In his statement, he expressed hope that the House “will quickly reach an agreement that can pass — and that will address the worries voiced by thousands of Rhode Islanders in the past week.”

jmulligan@belo-dc.com