Washington ? Without dissent, the Senate approved on Monday the most sweeping changes in corporate accountability since the Depression, creating stiff penalties and jail terms for company fraud and tightening oversight of the accounting industry.

The vote was 97-0 for the bipartisan bill, lifted by a rising tide of unease over a string of corporate accounting scandals that have shattered Americans’ confidence in business and the markets and threatened the fragile economic recovery.

“It is high time we call corporate executives on the carpet and hold them responsible,” Sen. Max Cleland, D-Ga., declared on the Senate floor before the vote.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, denounced “the crooks running these corporations.”

As the Senate neared passage of the legislation after nearly a week of debate and votes on amendments, President Bush told business leaders, “We intend to hold people accountable.”

“We can’t pass a law that says, ‘You will be honest,”‘ the president said in a speech at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “We can pass laws that say, ‘If you’re not honest we’ll get you.”‘

Bush urged Congress to get him a bill to sign before adjourning for its summer recess. Congressional leaders indicated they would try to do that.

In a show of bipartisanship, a spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said lawmakers would try to begin today resolving differences between the bill in the Democratic-controlled Senate and a version passed in April by the GOP-led House. The House measure is widely considered weaker, because it lacks penalties for corporate fraud and does not go as far toward reining in accountants.

“That’s something that we’re going to try to aim for,” said the Hastert spokesman, John Feehery.

In rare shows of unanimity, senators voted last week to add a series of new penalties, including 10-year prison terms for securities fraud. Chief executive officers and chief financial officers who certified false company financial reports would be slapped with prison terms of five to 10 years and fines of $500,000 to $1 million.