You're reading: Obama urges bank tax as next step in reform

TORONTO, June 26 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama, fresh from a win on a sweeping overhaul of Wall Street regulations, urged the U.S. Congress to take up his proposal for a $90 billion, 10-year tax on banks as the next step in reform.

Obama wants to slap a 0.15 percent tax on the liabilities of the biggest U.S. financial institutions to recoup the costs to taxpayers of the financial bailout.

"We need to impose a fee on the banks that were the biggest beneficiaries of taxpayer assistance at the height of our financial crisis — so we can recover every dime of taxpayer money," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address.

Obama, who is in Canada to attend gatherings with leaders of the world’s biggest economies, also used the address to welcome a deal by congressional negotiators on a historic rewriting of U.S. financial regulations.

Obama hopes to tout the changes as a model for other countries at the Group of 20 summit in Toronto on Saturday and Sunday.