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WASHINGTON — A top Treasury official told Congress Wednesday that the federal government should not force banks that receive taxpayer assistance to make loans that bankers might deem risky.

"However well-intended, government officials are not positioned to make better commercial decisions than lenders in our communities," Neel Kashkari, interim assistant Treasury secretary for financial stability, told a subcommittee of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Kashkari, who was put in the job in the administration of President George W. Bush, testified amid growing impatience among members of Congress who want evidence that the taxpayer money and the Treasury strategies are actually loosening credit markets.

Under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the federal government has used more than $300 billion in taxpayer money to infuse financial institutions with cash, much of it by purchasing preferred stock and other assets.

Both Republicans and Democrats on the subcommittee called for banks to reveal how they were using the money and detail whether they were increasing lending.

"We don’t know if $300 billion has changed anyone’s behavior," said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

Subcommittee chairman Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, complained that at least three financial institutions that have received TARP money — Citigroup Inc payday loans with no fax., Bank of America Corp. and JP Morgan Chase and Co. — have made billions of dollars in foreign investments.

"If the banking system is in serious enough trouble to require massive amounts of federal support, shouldn’t that federal support be channeled to the domestic economy?" Kucinich asked.

Kashkari said it was difficult to track whether foreign loans were made with U.S. deposits or foreign deposits because money "is fungible."

"We also have to be careful that if we set hard rules not letting our largest institutions do business abroad, other counties may say, OK, they’re going to reciprocate and not let foreign banks then lend in America," he said.

In a television interview, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., disputed the notion that taxpayer money could not be tracked.

"If everything was fungible, you would never have any kind of cost accounting," he said on MSNBC. He argued that lawmakers don’t want to block banks from investing in foreign entities.

"We are trying to stop them from using the money that’s advanced by the American taxpayer.

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