WASHINGTON — When he sat down yesterday with President Bush to describe how the Wall Street crisis is hitting ordinary Americans, Al Lubrano talked about the plant in Lincoln where he makes highly specialized components for electronic devices.

He told Mr. Bush that next week, he is telling most of his more than 200 workers to stay home without pay. “This is terrible,” he said of the economic slowdown that the House of Representatives will try to address today when it votes on a massive federal rescue package for the financial system.

“Right now this bill has absolutely nothing to do with Wall Street,” Lubrano said with emotion, recounting in an interview how he and a dozen manufacturers from around the country poured out their worries during a 45-minute encounter with Mr. Bush.

“This thing is about common, everyday, hardworking American citizens who have jobs and who are worried that they are going to lose them,” said Lubrano, who was asked to visit the president as a member of the National Manufacturers Association, which is holding one of its periodic Washington gatherings this week.

The meeting was not a happy one. “We are outraged, absolutely livid — as is the president — about what has happened on Wall Street,” Lubrano said. “We were very candid and frank with him as to why we thought it was very, very important to get this bill passed and begin to deal with this problem.”

The problem is strikingly similar from region to region and industry to industry, Lubrano said.

In most cases, the manufacturers told the president that a sudden dearth of credit was hurting their factories in ways maddeningly unconnected to the normal rules of economics.

In many cases “there’s plenty of demand” from the ultimate customers of these companies, said Lubrano. He and his fellow executives have factories and workers ready to supply the products in demand. “But the customers can’t get credit!” As Lubrano explained it, the difficulty is not with troubled or deeply-indebted firms, nor with those seeking unusual or risky loans. It is with the normal flow of short-term credit that all kinds of businesses use in their day-to-day operations. Or it’s the bread-and-butter credit familiar to almost every family in the country.

Lubrano is president and chief operating officer of Technical Materials Inc., which uses electroplating and other processes to make specialized items for customers across the industrial spectrum, from the makers of video-game players and other electronic toys to the companies that supply hard drives to the computer industry.

In Lincoln yesterday, Robert Tavares, Technical Materials’ vice president of finance, said that the company has seen the rate of new orders drop precipitously in the past three weeks, which prompted the latest round of potential layoffs.

“It was very sudden and dramatic,” he said.

Beginning late last month, the company issued layoff notices to nearly its entire 200-person staff. Tavares said the cuts are “across the board” and in every department.

But there is no certainty to how many employees would be ultimately laid off, or when the layoffs might happen, since the company, like many others, is waiting to see what happens with the financial package in Congress, said Tavares.

Potential layoffs have been a reality at the company for nearly a decade, added Tavares, who has been with the company for almost 20 years.

Oftentimes, employees are temporarily laid off and called back as needed.

The recent slowdown in the automotive industry has been the major factor in the drop in purchase orders, says John P. Massoyan, the company’s director of operations.

Technical Materials manufactures products for companies that serve the consumer electronics and the automotive industries.

For one of its customers, Michigan-based automotive parts supplier Delphi Corporation, for example, it provides parts that go into airbags, emissions controls and transmission systems.

“We’re part of the supply chain, and anything that affects that industry affects every company in the food chain,” Massoyan says. “It’s the trickle-down effect.”

Lubrano said he recently began to detect a slowdown, “like turning off a switch.” While there are customers in the market for cars, their sudden inability to get loans slowed automobile sales. Carmakers therefore reduced production, cutting orders for the components of automobiles. Soon enough, the slump hit Technical Materials.

If the financial rescue plan is enacted, Lubrano believes, confidence in the financial markets will be restored, credit will again begin to flow and the demand for Technical Materials’ products will rise — eventually.

Lubrano was asked whether he would be able to avoid extending the temporary layoffs at Technical Materials beyond next week.

“I hope so,” he replied.

Staff writer Philip Marcelo contributed to this report.

jmulligan@belo-dc.com