President Barack Obama will try to recoup for taxpayers as much as $120 billion of the money spent to bail out the financial system, most likely through a tax on large banks, administration and congressional officials said Monday. The president has yet to settle on the details, and his senior economic advisers are weighing a number of options as they complete the budget proposal Obama will release next month. The general idea is to devise a levy that would help reduce the budget deficit, which is now at a level not seen since World War II, and would also discourage the kinds of excessive risk-taking among financial institutions that led to a near-collapse of Wall Street in 2008, the officials said. But the president also has a political purpose -- to respond to the popular anger building across the country as big banks, having been saved by the taxpayer-financed rescue, report record profits and begin paying out huge bonuses while millions of Americans remain out of work. The administration has previously rejected two ideas that have received a lot of attention in recent months: a transaction tax on financial trades and a tax on executives' bonuses. The most likely alternatives would be a tax based on the size and riskiness of an institution's loans and other financial holdings, or a tax on profits. Lobbyists for bankers, taken by surprise, immediately objected to any new tax. They said financial institutions had been repaying their portion of the bailout money in full, with interest. Losses to the taxpayers from the $700 billion bailout fund -- estimated to run as high as $120 billion -- are expected to come from the automobile companies, the insurance giant American International Group and programs to avert home foreclosures. 'It is perplexing to us,' said Edward L. Yingling, president and chief executive of the American Bankers Association. A tax, he said, would be 'a hit on banks that will decrease their ability to lend.' But the industry's objections carry less weight at a time when Obama is under intense pressure to appear as being tough on Wall Street. Big banks are expected to begin announcing huge bonuses in coming days for their top executives and traders. Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the Democrat who is chairman of the House banking committee, said the president was required to seek recovery of any losses under the law that created the $700 billion financial rescue fund, known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program, in October 2008. The law did not spell out how to do so. 