Soon after hostilities began, therefore, a tariff bill came before Congress. It was bitterly and stubbornly fought. In the Senate its defeat appeared sure; but Crittenden and Clayton, believing it could only prove a discreditable failure, had a Whig support it in order to gain party advantage at the expense of the nation, and by this unworthy trick and the casting vote of the presiding officer it passed. In company with it went a warehouse bill and the restoration of the sub-treasury system, which divorced the government from the banks, and required the treasury to accept and pay out only specie. About the first of August, 1846, this entire system became law. "Our administration seems enamoured of ruin, and woos calamity for itself," exclaimed the Whig _North American_; our credit is threatened by the sub-treasury plan; our industries are deprived of protection; "while an expensive war is eating out our vitals, our revenue is to be diminished"; and a direct tax will have to be laid.[33.9] The new tariff became effective on the first of December, 1846. As of course importers waited for it, a lean period preceded that event, and the heavy receipts that followed it, providing Walker with an apt retort, did not prevent the total for the year ending with June, 1847, from coming short of his estimate by more than four millions. Without waiting to acquire this unwelcome fact, however, the government found itself compelled in June, 1846, to revise at a sharp angle upward its predictions of the expenditures. Over and above their calculations of the previous December the war and navy departments now called for $23,952,904, which Polk informed Congress was "the largest amount which any state of the service" would require up to July 1, 1847. The secretary of the treasury had expected to find on July 1, 1847, a surplus (virtually that estimated for the previous year minus half a million) of at least $4,332,441, and had confidently hoped for a substantial gain in revenue; but he admitted that it was now requisite, since a working capital of four millions for the treasury and the mints had to be kept on hand, to provide $12,586,406 of additional income.[33.10] The proper method of handling our war finances was, in the first place, to increase the existing taxes--not only to obtain funds promptly, but as a firm support for the nation's credit and a basis for those temporary loans which are a wise expedient at the beginning of a war; and Walker expected the proposed tariff to answer this purpose. But the question how to raise these twelve and a half millions remained. Excise and direct taxes, the administration believed, would not be prompt enough, and would not seem to the public warranted by the circumstances. It was therefore recommended to Congress that both treasury notes and a loan should be resorted to; and on July 22, 1846, without much debate, the issue of ten millions in such obligations, to be sold at not less than par, was authorized.[33.11]