On the side of Expenditure the fixed Debt Charge is
£355 millions, and Mr. Snowden expects a total expendi- ture of over £803 millions, more than £37 millions above the estimated income. The most swollen figure is £30 millions for transitional benefit. The House had already passed the estimates of Supply Services at 1439 millions. Mr. Snowden's problem, therefore, was to find from new sources £37 millions, and he solved it by means that only involve extra direct taxation of 17 millions, to be raised by an addition of 2d. to the tax on a gallon of petrol. Superficially, then, we seem to be lucky. The next £10 millions he proposed to raise by the improvident method of making the Income Tax payer pay in January three-quarters of his tax instead of half, so that by the end of the financial year the Treasury will rce:ive in twelve months payments for fifteen months. But the biggest sum of all, £20 millions, still remained to be found ; and Mr. Snowden goes to New York for it. He lifts it bodily from the dollar credit of £33 millions lying there on the Exchange Account. Whether it be wise or not to deplete this credit by more than half, it is, as Mr. Snowden admitted, quite wrong to take it and Lpend it in current expenditure as though it were income.
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