By PHILIP ELLIOTT
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama is weighing a levy on financial institutions to help recover shortfalls in a $700 billion bank bailout fund and to help balance a budget that is looking increasingly grim amid an ongoing economic crisis.
A senior administration official said Monday that Obama would seek modifications to the law that sent billions in bailout money in 2008 and 2009 to a flailing Wall Street that was approaching collapse. The government official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the president’s thinking.
The 2008 law that created the Troubled Asset Relief Program requires the president to seek a way to recoup unrecovered TARP money from financial institutions, but five years after the law was enacted. It does not specify how the money should be recovered.