Page:Mexico's dilemma.djvu/172

144 Charge of this Department, Don Rafael Nieto, a copy of the following important bill in which the Executive is authorised to negotiate a loan up to 150,000,000 pesos to be exclusively destined to cover the deficit appearing in the national budgets until they are adjusted. The text of the important bill to which we refer, and which will soon go before Congress, states as follows:

"The Congress of the Union has been already informed by the Executive that the budgets of the federation at present show a monthly deficit of about 5,000,000 pesos.

"To make up this figure we took into account only the normal expenses of administration, omitting the great number of small obligations of the Government which were not considered urgent, but which in any case organise a great floating debt which is increasing day by day.

"If, furthermore, we take into consideration the high cost of living, higher every day, and the necessity which we will later meet as a consequence of it of raising the wages of public employes; if we take into account the possibility that the work of pacification already is necessitating constant expenses, the supposition that the real deficit will exceed the amount above is not exaggerated.

"In order to arrest the gravity of the foregoing considerations it is sufficient to state others in respect to the future which makes a favourable