The oversight panel for the government's 14-month-old bailout program generally supported a decision by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to keep it alive nine more months, but challenged him on Thursday about his management of the operation. In a quarterly appearance before the panel, Geithner was called upon to defend decisions to fully pay financial giants for their claims against the American International Group, to account for continuing troubles at small banks and businesses and to answer criticisms that the Treasury Department might be letting some big banks exit the program too soon. The hearing of the Congressional Oversight Panel came amid the release this week of three reports on the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The panel's year-end assessment gave the program, known as TARP, credit for helping to avert a financial collapse but raised some of the issues discussed Thursday. Separately on Thursday, the inspector-general for TARP reported that Treasury was addressing criticism that information regarding the use of taxpayer funds was not transparent enough. The report also questioned a decision that allowed two large insurance companies, the Hartford Financial Services Group and the Lincoln National Corp., to receive a combined $4.3 billion in bailout money intended for banks. The Treasury's Office of Financial Stability on Thursday released a report whose findings Geithner had already disclosed showing that the program's losses are likely to be a fraction of the $700 billion allotted, while the portion for banks is making a profit. The independent Government Accountability Office audited the report. While big banks are mostly stabilized, Geithner told the panel on Thursday, the program is needed to help reduce home foreclosures and for a new initiative to get capital to smaller banks so they, in turn, will lend money to the credit-starved small businesses that create most jobs. Elizabeth Warren, the Harvard Law School professor who heads the panel, pressed Geithner about the Treasury Department's record on stimulating credit from small banks. She noted that the department has started three programs within TARP to spur lending to small businesses 'and clearly has not gotten the job done.' 'What's going to be different now, Mr. Secretary?' she asked. Geithner countered that the initiatives had helped. The problem, he said, is that smaller banks 'have been very reluctant to come and do business with the government.' They fear they will be 'stigmatized' as weak, he said, and that the government might later impose new restrictions. 