Bloomberg's Julianna Goldman reports:

As many as 50 financial firms with assets greater than $50 billion each would be hit by a levy President Barack Obama will announce today to help recoup taxpayer-bailout money and trim the federal budget deficit, an administration official said.
...

White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said today that the president is trying to recoup money given to the banks through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) now "because it's clear that the financial institutions have rebounded."

"He thinks it's fair, he thinks its equitable, he thinks it puts the responsibility on the financial institutions that were principally responsible for taking the risk that created the financial crisis and also the institutions that primarily benefited from the taxpayer loans," Jarrett told Bloomberg TV.
...

The official also said that Congress would be able to amend the fee in the future based on its own determinations.

Obama Administration officials estimate that losses from the TARP program are around $120 billion, and argue this new tax will pay for those losses.

However, much of the estimated loss from TARP comes from the auto industry bailout.

So what appears to happening here is that the Obama Administration and congressional Democrats are attempting to levy a tax on financial institutions -- some of which never received TARP funds, some which have already paid them back -- in large part to pay for the bailout of the auto industry, a bailout which greatly favored the autoworkers' unions, a Democratic Party constituency.

And they'll use as political cover for this the populist anger -- much of it deserved -- over the financial bailout. However, make no mistake: much of this will in reality be a transfer of wealth from the financial industry to a Democratic Party voting bloc.

Some background.

More background.

Update: Here's an ABC News interview with one of President Obama's top advisors, Valerie Jarrett:

Note well Jarrett's comment (at about 0:43), "...what I would say to them from a PR perspective is: How does it look to pass on those fees to your customers...." Of course that's exactly what the Obama Administration and the Democratic Party are doing to the US taxpayer in this obvious attempt to hide this payoff to its union constituency!