The Obama administration has extended the $700 billion financial-bailout program until October, setting up a struggle between Democrats who favor using some of the leftover money to help generate jobs and Republicans who say that it should be used to shrink soaring budget deficits.
The administration insists that the bailout fund is still needed to prevent further turmoil in the banking system. In announcing the decision yesterday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said that extending the program will also help homeowners struggling to avoid losing homes to foreclosures and small businesses having trouble getting loans.
The administration is now projecting that the losses to the government from the bailout program will be about $141 billion -- $200 billion less than it estimated two months ago.
President Obama said that the freed-up money can help reduce the record-high federal budget deficit and "invest in job creation on Main Street rather than Wall Street."
Obama spoke to reporters after a meeting with congressional leaders aimed at providing momentum for a new-jobs program he outlined Tuesday. That effort focuses on combating the nation's 10 percent unemployment rate by providing tax breaks to encourage companies to hire new workers, to increase bank lending to small businesses and to provide a fresh round of infrastructure spending.
The administration has not provided details on the size of the new spending package. But Democratic leaders suggested that it could cost between $75 billion and $150 billion.
Both the administration and Democratic leaders have indicated that they want to divert some of the unspent bailout money to a jobs program. Their goal is to refashion a hugely unpopular program viewed by voters as a taxpayer-financed bailout for big Wall Street firms that then reaped millions of dollars in lavish bonuses.
Republicans vowed to keep trying to close down the rescue program by Dec. 31. They said that any leftover money should be devoted exclusively to curbing the country's soaring budget deficits.
"The Obama administration just can't seem to let go of the $700 billion in ‘walking-around money' taxpayers were forced to put on the line to bail out Wall Street last year," said Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas.
Republicans also criticized the Treasury Department for using the Troubled Asset Relief Program as a slush fund to support programs that Congress never intended, including bailouts of automakers and failing insurance giant American International Group Inc.
"American taxpayers have had enough of open-ended bailouts that have left them stuck with trillions of dollars in new debt," the House minority leader, Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, said yesterday. "TARP should be shut down by the end of the year. It's time to get the government out of the bailout business."
Geithner contended that the bailout program helped avert a worse financial outcome. Financial conditions have improved, and the economy has finally pulled out of a deep tailspin and is starting to grow again.
The government expects up to $175 billion in repayments from rescued companies by the end of next year, he said.
TARP was passed during the height of the financial crisis in October 2008 and was scheduled to expire at the end of this year. In his notification to Congress, Geithner said that it will be extended until Oct. 3, 2010, "to respond to an immediate and substantial threat to the economy stemming from financial instability."
Geithner said that the administration planned only limited use of the TARP over the next year. He said he expects that $550 billion of the $700 billion will be spent. There was $364 billion committed in the 2009 budget year that ended on Sept. 30. Of that, Geithner estimated the government would not recover $42 billion.
The new commitments would be limited to three areas: support to avert mortgage foreclosures, boosting capital for small and community banks that are principal lenders to small businesses, and a potential increase to a joint program with the Federal Reserve designed to bolster consumer and small-business lending.
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