WASHINGTON – Uncle Sam – in the form of the US Treasury – will inject up to $6 billion into GMAC, GM’s financing arm, as part of a plan to pump more cash into GM and aid the struggling auto industry.

Under the plan, the Treasury will buy $5 billion in preferred GMAC shares, paying an 8 percent annual dividend. It also will lend up to $1 billion to General Motors Corp. so that it too can buy additional equity in GMAC, which the Treasury could take when it wants.

The Treasury said the money for the injection would come from the $700 billion financial industry bailout, and that GMAC would have to meet restrictions on executive pay as part of the deal.

This round of billions is separate from the $17.4 billion Congress loaned GM and Chrysler just before Christmas. This round is aimed squarely at shoring up the finances of GMAC, which last week was told by the Federal Reserve it could become a bank holding company, granting it access to the $700-billion financial industry bailout and other aid.

GMAC had pressured bondholders to convert 75 percent of their debt into equity, part of a plan to raise $30 billion in capital and stave off a possible bankruptcy of its own. As of Monday night, GMAC still had not announced the results from that debt exchange, which ended at midnight Friday.

The Fed required GM to sell most of its 49 percent stake in GMAC, and forced Cerberus Capital, the private equity firm that bought 51 percent of GMAC from GM, to turn much of its voting stake over to its investors.

While the outcome of the bond swap alone won�??t change the Fed�??s decision, the Fed could reconsider if GMAC were to fall well short of its goal for fresh capital.

The Treasury’s new loan to GM came as it and Chrysler scoured the fine details of the federal government’s $17.4 billion rescue plan Monday, pushing the payment of the first $8 billion slice back to Monday at the earliest.

GM and Chrysler originally were slated to receive $4 billion each on Monday, when their individual deals were scheduled to close, and both have warned they could run short of cash in a matter of days without federal help. The companies face the end of their financial years for bookkeeping practices Thursday.

The automakers must commit to winning extensive sacrifices from creditors and unions by March 31 as part of the rescue, with a detailed survival plan due to the U.S. Treasury by Feb. 17. Those plans must include cutting debt by two-thirds and requiring the UAW to accept wages and work rules that match those of foreign automakers’ U.S. plants by the end of 2009.

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