WASHINGTON — Top Obama administration officials met for nearly an hour with Senate Republicans at the Capitol on Wednesday, hoping to persuade them to support the release of the second half of the Treasury’s $700 billion financial bailout money.
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But several lawmakers said they still wanted better assurances that the money would be used to improve the credit markets and would be more carefully supervised.
President Bush formally asked for release of the $350 billion on Monday at the request of President-elect Barack Obama. Congress can block the money if both chambers vote to do so. If that happens, Mr. Obama has said he would veto the disapproval resolution, allowing the money to flow. Both the president-elect and Congressional Democrats say they hope that will not become necessary.
The Senate could vote on a disapproval motion as early as Thursday. Obama transition officials and senior Congressional aides have expressed confidence that there will be enough votes to defeat the disapproval motion.
The House on Thursday is expected to vote to approve new legislation, drafted by Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, that would impose tough new restrictions on how the $350 billion would be spent, including a requirement that at least $40 billion be used to prevent home foreclosures. The Obama team has indicated that it opposes any new legislation, and the Senate has shown little interest in a new bill.
But even as angry debate over Mr. Frank’s bill began on the House floor, some lawmakers said that they expected the Senate would not follow the House but would soon act to release the $350 billion.
Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the senior Republican on the Budget Committee, has said that he will support the release of the money and that the bailout had prevented an economic catastrophe last fall. Mr. Obama has personally telephoned some senators, urging them to release the money; among them was Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, who said on Wednesday that she was leaning that way.
Lawmakers in both parties have expressed reluctance to release the money because of deep anger over the handling of the bailout program by the Bush administration. To address those concerns, Senate Republicans met for nearly an hour late Wednesday afternoon with Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama’s chief of staff, and Lawrence H. Summers, who will be the top economic adviser in the Obama White House.
After the meeting, the Republican leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, said the Bush administration’s use of money from the bailout plan, formally called the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, had reduced support for the effort among Republicans. Mr. McConnell said he could not predict how a vote would turn out.
“Larry Summers and Rahm Emanuel knew they had a skeptical audience,” he said. “A lot of good questions were asked. I will not be able to answer the inevitable question that you are going to ask me about how many Republican votes will there be in opposition to a resolution of disapproval. I don’t know.”
Mr. McConnell suggested that Republicans were looking for clearer statements from Mr. Obama.
“We are looking for assurances about how this new tranche of TARP funding will be used,” he said. “They probably haven’t said quite enough publicly yet for most Republicans; maybe they will say more before we vote.”
