U.S. President Barack Obama plans to appoint senior administration officials — rather than a single "car czar," as had been discussed — to oversee a restructuring of the auto industry.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and National Economic Council director Lawrence Summers will oversee the across-the-government panel, a senior administration official said Sunday on the condition of anonymity because no announcement had been made.

"The president understands the importance of this issue and also understands that the auto industry affects and is affected by a broad range of economic policies," the official said.

As the teams move forward, Obama "wants to make sure that we're getting the expertise and input of agencies across the government," the official said.

Obama and his aides face difficult choices on the fate of the U.S. auto industry, weighing the cost of pouring billions more into struggling companies against possible bankruptcies that could undermine plans to jump-start the economy.

General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC are racing against a Tuesday deadline to submit plans to the government. The plans are to be followed by weeks of intense negotiations ahead of a March 31 deadline for the final versions of the reports.

GM and Chrysler are living off a combined $13.4 billion US in government loans. If they don't receive concessions by March 31, they face the prospect of having the loans pulled, followed by bankruptcy proceedings.

Any bankruptcy would be particularly painful, with some economists predicting the country could lose two to three million jobs this year and the unemployment rate, now 7.6 per cent, could swell past nine per cent by the spring of 2010.

In television interviews Sunday, White House senior adviser David Axelrod didn't respond directly when asked whether the U.S. economy could withstand a GM bankruptcy. Nor did he directly address a question about whether the Obama administration would let GM go into bankruptcy.

"I'm not going to prejudge anything. I think that there is going to have to be a restructuring of those companies. I'm not going to get into the mode of how that happens. We'll wait and see what they have to say on Tuesday," Axelrod said.

Executives at the two automakers have said bankruptcy is not an option because consumers would not buy cars from a company that might go out of business.