Meanwhile, the House of Representatives was grilling former and current WorldCom executives about accounting irregularities, and senators were voting unanimously to support tough new corporate-reform legislation...

Up and down Pennsylvania Avenue, both political parties are sensing the public disquiet over the expanding list of business scandals — and sensing, too, that this fall's mid-term elections might not be only about how well Washington is dealing with terrorism.

They are right.

Stock market declines, fueled by the scandals, are deflating the public's hope about the economy. Many Americans are not so convinced that there is an economic recovery.

In the last week of June, for example, the Commerce Department and the Pew Research Center issued two very different reports. The government released figures showing that from January to March of this year the economy grew at an annual rate of 6.1 percent, the strongest showing in more than two years.

At the same time, Pew found that economic anxiety is on the increase. In a mid-June survey, only 30 percent of respondents said they expected the economy to improve, down from 44 percent six months ago. At about the same time, the Harris Poll found that the percentage of people naming the economy as the country's most important problem rose after falling in the early spring. And a Gallup survey found a diminished margin of economic optimism — with 47 percent of respondents saying the economy is getting better and 40 percent saying it is worsening, compared with 52 percent and 39 percent respectively in early May. Tellingly, 67 percent of respondents in a subsequent Gallup survey said recent changes in the stock market have made them less confident about the nation's economy.

The recovery's apparent inability to generate jobs may well be another part of the election equation. Despite the end of the recession as economists see it, the unemployment rate rose slightly last month, to 5.9 percent. Some 150,000 jobs have been lost since the beginning of this year. And people have noticed. Just 31 percent of Americans said there are plenty of jobs available in their community, according to Pew's mid-June survey, down from 42 percent a year ago.

This is emerging as a central concern even for the upper middle class and suburbanites, who may be worrying about getting better jobs and raises. Among people with lower incomes, the anxiety is about losing a job or taking a pay cut.

As economic optimism has ebbed, the public's frustration with Washington is mounting. While President Bush's overall approval ratings remain quite strong, just one in three Americans says the president is doing all he can to improve the economy. And only one-quarter of Americans give Congress a good grade for its efforts on behalf of the economy.

Little wonder that when voters consider the subjects they want their local candidates to debate come the fall, about as many mention the economy as mention terrorism. One in five voters in Pew's latest survey say they want this fall's candidates to talk about terrorism and national security. But economic and education issues are cited just as often, and 13 percent mention health care.

Will public discontent with the economy eventually rise to a level that will cause voters to demand change in Washington? So far, that doesn't seem true. Pew polling continues to find that voter support is divided more or less equally between Republican and Democratic Congressional candidates.

A focus on the domestic agenda, and new revelations about corporate wrongdoing, would most likely help Democratic candidates. However, there's no guarantee that Democrats would be able to play the populist card effectively with voters, just as the Republicans have rarely been able to play the moralism card effectively.

Public anxiety about domestic economic issues is rising to the top, and neither party can skirt these issues in the coming campaign season.

Andrew Kohut is director of the Pew Research Center.