WASHINGTON - As Congress began looking at ways last quarter to tighten regulations on financial institutions, some of the biggest recipients of the government's $700 billion bank bailout increased their spending on influencing legislators.

"While these companies continue to count their taxpayer cash, they're using their lobbying against critical financial reform," said Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director at Public Interest Research Group. "Anywhere but Washington, you would think this was the Saturday morning cartoons."

Bank of America Corp., which received $45 billion in federal rescue aid, spent $800,000 in the April-June quarter, up from $660,000 in the first quarter though still below the nearly $1.2 million paid out in the year-ago period.

Morgan Stanley's lobbying costs jumped to $830,000 from $540,000 in the first three months of the year, and $690,000 in the second quarter of 2008. The company last month repaid the $10 billion in aid it had received.

Bailed-out automaker General Motors again was one of the biggest spenders, according to the mandatory disclosure reports filed so far with Congress covering the April-June period. GM spent about $2.8 million on lobbying Congress and the federal government, about the same as in the first quarter but down from $3 million in the second quarter of 2008.

GM made an unusually swift exit from bankruptcy protection on July 10, with what once was the world's biggest and most powerful automaker emerging leaner and cleansed of massive debt and burdensome contracts that would have sunk it - if not for $50 billion in federal aid. The government now holds a 61-percent controlling interest in the automaker.

"At any given time, GM is engaged with policymakers on a variety of complex policy issues with significant economic and competitive consequences to individual automotive companies," GM spokesman Greg Martin said. "We believe we have an obligation to remain engaged at the federal and state levels and to have our voice heard in the policymaking process."

GM, perennially one of the biggest spenders in Washington on lobbying, recently said it had terminated contracts with a dozen lobbying firms it has used to help make its case in the capital. The automaker retained its in-house lobbyists, who work on health care, tax, trade, safety, environmental and other issues.

Chrysler, which received about $12 billion in federal aid and also recently emerged from bankruptcy court, reported spending $697,500 on lobbying in the second quarter - down from $720,600 in the first quarter and $1.4 million in last year's second quarter.