President Barack Obama plans to recoup US taxpayer funds spent on bailing out American banks in his next budget, the White House said today.

With Wall Street banks set to reveal huge bonuses for staff this week, a White House spokesman launched an attack on financial institutions, saying some executives "continue not to get it" when they awarded big bonuses after receiving billion-dollar bailouts from the taxpayer.

The president is considering levying a fee or a new tax on financial services companies to help close the yawning federal budget deficit, which is estimated to be greater than $1tr (£600bn) next year.

"That's the president's goal," Robert Gibbs, Obama's press spokesman, told reporters but he declined to detail the plan or to describe the mechanism to recoup the funds. On Monday, US news media reported the administration was considering imposing fees on banks in its proposed budget for the next fiscal year.

The move follows the introduction of a 50% tax on bank bonuses in the UK and would be a huge boost for Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, who have faced criticism about the impact their 50% tax on bonuses will have on the City because no other country with a leading financial centre has followed suit.

The Obama administration has previously resisted calls for stark limits on compensation at the largest financial firms, so Washington's alignment with the embattled prime minister and his chancellor would be a significant coup and would bolster their attempts to harness widespread public anger in their fight against City excess. But even as the president and his aides rail at the banks, Wall Street appears ready to enjoy one of the largest bonus seasons in history.

The world's biggest investment banks are expected to pay out more than $65bn in salaries and bonuses in the next two weeks, bolstering the view in the US and UK that it is business as usual on Wall Street and in the City, barely a year since the taxpayers' bailout of the banking system.

The US bailout – the Troubled Asset Relief Programme, or Tarp – remains one of the most controversial steps the US government took in an effort to stabilise the country's battered financial system. The legislation authorised up to $700bn in spending, although the US treasury will disburse much less. As of 30 September, the department had spent $364bn, most of it in capital investments in the firms. Some $164bn had been repaid as of late last month. The treasury department estimates that total bank repayments will top $175bn by the end of 2010, and says the bank investments have already yielded $16bn in profits.

The Obama administration insists the programme helped stave off further financial disaster, though it drew howls of protest from all sides of the political spectrum. Bank executives have acknowledged the potential for public outrage at the size of their bonuses. Goldman Sachs is thought to be considering a plan to force highly paid staff to make charity donations and has already announced its management team will take their bonuses in shares rather than cash.

However, there have been few signs that bonuses will be reduced, promising to fuel public anger in the US, where unemployment is 10%. On Monday, New York's attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, sent letters to eight of the nation's largest banks demanding information on the structure of their bonus programmes, with an explanation of how they had adjusted compensation to account for the large influx of taxpayer bailout funds.

"No one can disagree that transparency and disclosure is essential," Cuomo told reporters. In the letters, he refers to the "new responsibility to taxpayers" the banks took on when they accepted federal bailout money. Cuomo, a likely candidate in the New York gubernatorial election next year, has been investigating executive compensation at the banks.