More U.S. bailout funds depend on clarity: officials

The Treasury's $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program is now down to about $109.5 billion in uncommitted funds, Acting U.S. Comptroller General Gene Dodaro and TARP Special Inspector General Neil Barofsky told a Senate Finance Committee hearing.

The figure is $25 billion less than an estimate made by U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Sunday, because the Treasury assumes that some banks will give back some of their government-supplied capital in coming months.

Among the uses for the unclaimed funds is additional capital for the top 20 U.S. banks after "stress tests" are completed at the end of April and possible additional aid to General Motors Corp (GM.N) and Chrysler LLC.

Dodaro said the Treasury has yet to develop a means of regularly and routinely communicating its rescue activities to Congress, the public, industry and other critical stakeholders. He added the department needs an integrated strategy to build public understanding of its various programs.

"Without such a strategy, Treasury may face challenges should it need additional funding for the program," the Government Accountability Office said in a report released by Dodaro.

Elizabeth Warren, who heads the congressional oversight panel for TARP, also criticized a continuing lack of transparency for the Treasury bailout program, begun last year by the Bush administration. She added she had "substantial questions" about new consumer lending and asset purchase programs being launched by Treasury.

"We have enough complex programs that have lots of wires and bells and whistles with no articulation of what it's supposed to accomplish," she said. "When that's the case, that means there is no transparency, indeed it means that the Congress and the American people have been cut out of the conversation."

Without better understanding, TARP "will not go forward," she said.

The hearing was briefly attended by satirical filmmaker Michael Moore, sporting his trademark dark baseball cap. He left partway through without speaking.

Political newspaper Roll Call said on its website that Moore was in Washington to shoot film and conduct interviews for a new documentary he is making about the economic crisis.

AIG INQUIRIES

The oversight officials also expressed frustration at the American International Group (AIG.N) payment of $165 million in bonuses to employees of the unit that nearly bankrupted the company, and said they were conducting inquiries into the company's disclosure of these contracts and the government handling of the matter.

Warren said the congressional panel had requested information from Treasury on the systemic risks that AIG posed and the "opaque" relationship between AIG, its counterparties, the Treasury and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

"It is not surprising that congressional and public outrage have been stoked on issues such as bonuses for AIG executives when there is no information or basic explanation as to why substantial taxpayer-funded assistance is necessary and what the money is accomplishing," Warren said.