AZ vs. CA:04 California Exhibits, Vol. IV; Nos. 151-192

page 24

-24- I should like to add that the Treasury has, and has expressed, no opinion as to the merits of the project embodied in the Bill (H. R. 6044), but that it regards the financial and bonding features of the bill as wholly untenable from the Treasury point of view. In its judgment, the credit of the United States would be injuriously affected and its financial operations embarrassed were this Bill to become law, imposing as it does upon the Secretary of the Treasury the necessity of issuing obligations of the United States, themselves misnamed certificates, to an unlimited amount, with maturities and rates of interest determined without regard to the judgment of the Secretary of the Treasury as to the financial requirements of the United States, and to be issued without reference to whether the United States were already amply provided with funds or might obtain them on better terms. The Treasury believes that if after thorough investigation and after negotiations with Mexico, a project should be found econominally feasible and practicable from an engineering point of view, and if the Congress should then determine that the project was one which the United States should undertake to finance, a direct appropriation of a specific amount should be proposed for the purpose. S. P. Gilbert, Jr. Representing Department of the Treasury. Washington, D.C., August 21, 1919.