WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is tackling the bailout of the battered financial sector on two tracks: overhauling how the government spends the money while devising new executive compensation restrictions for banks that get it.

Administration officials said the pay limits could be announced this week, but said the more complicated task of setting up a new framework for rescuing the nation's ailing banks would have to wait until early next week.

President Barack Obama, in a grim assessment of the financial industry, said Monday he would probably need more money to bail out troubled institutions to ease a suffocating credit crunch. Still, he added, "some banks won't make it."

The Treasury Department is expected to announce new rules that limit executive pay for companies that receive "exceptional assistance" under the bailout program.

Obama reacted angrily last week to reports that banks gave more than $18 billion of bonuses at a time when they were relying on taxpayer money for their survival.

Administration officials say rules under consideration would prohibit institutions receiving "exceptional assistance" from giving severance payments to their top 55 executives. Their bonus pools would be reduced by about 40 percent from the 2007 level. Such companies would include Citigroup, insurance giant American International Group and automakers General Motors and Chrysler, all of whom received bailouts under the Bush administration.

In the Senate, Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., urged the administration to proceed with caution.

"I think we're all appalled by these — some of these executive salary arrangements and bonus arrangements and perks and all the rest," he said. "On the other hand, I really don't want the government to take over these businesses and start telling them everything about what they can do. Then you truly have nationalized the business."

Neither Obama nor other administration officials said how much a renewed rescue plan might cost.