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The Venezuelan government can count on annual revenues of $1,407,000,000, more than any other country in Latin America, but in the post-revolutionary era it needs every penny of it and more. To keep the armed forces contented in the barracks and out of his palace, Betancourt has maintained high defense spending. At the same time, he has boosted expenditures on social services: his 1960 school and health budget is double that of Pérez Jiménez' last year in office. What is more, he has decided to honor all the $1.2 billion worth of short-term promissory notes Pérez Jiménez issued to finance showy, graft-ridden public projects, or ill-planned, incomplete and unprofitable enterprises such as the state petrochemical industry and a steel mill. For fiscal 1959-60, Betancourt has divided the budget in two—the $1.5 billion he can expect from ordinary revenues for regular expenses, and $234 million in a "special" budget for development projects. The money for the special budget must come from an overseas loan.
Waiting Enemies. Like other reform-bent leaders in the hemisphere, Betancourt faces threats from powerful segments of the population. The air-force commander, Brigadier General Antonio Briceño, says flatly: "This government will be replaced by whomever the majority elects in 1964." But certainly lesser officers yearn for their lost political power as they goose-step their troops in review.
The Caracas mob that camps under bridges, jams the slums and lives in baby-skyscraper, low-cost housing around the city is always poised to rumble down in an avalanche of violence, as it did nine months before Betancourt took over, when Vice President Nixon was stoned.
Another worry is the group that led the mob into action against Nixon: the Venezuela Communist Party. Betancourt has rigidly excluded Communists from his government as an un-Venezuelan group. But the Reds are free to organize, and they mustered 160,000 congressional votes in the last election. They are strong in the press, the unions and Caracas' Central University.
Other potential opponents wait in the wings. When land reform gets fully under way, landowner protests are certain. The most important trade union, the Federation of Petroleum Workers, is now talking wages with the companies; the government, whose revenues depend on the size of oil-company profits, cannot favor big raises, but must not invite a violent strike. Venezuela's other political parties, the U.R.D. to the left of A.D. and the Catholic Copei to the right, so far stay in Betancourt's "unity" government, but they rumble ominously, and their demands for patronage hurt hopes of getting an efficient civil service.
The big oil companies dislike Betancourt's ban on the granting of new oil concessions, and they look with suspicion on his long-cherished plan to start a government oil company in competition with them. They are also still hurting from the decision of Rear Admiral Larrazábal's junta to jump the government's share of oil profits from 50% to 63%. But Betancourt is firmly on the record as opposed to expropriation, and the oil companies are on the President's side.