Javier Milei suffered a double blow in Congress on Thursday as a 12-hour Senate session ended with lawmakers approving a bill boosting university budgets and striking down a presidential decree for the first time in 30 years.
In a lengthy session lasting until the early hours of Friday morning, senators cast votes on a number of key issues. They paved the way for a new single ballot paper system for elections, passed a law to boost professors’ salaries and university budgets and rejected Milei’s decree that granted Argentina’s revamped intelligence services 100 billion pesos in extra discretionary funds.
Milei is expected to respond urgently to the new emergency law for universities, which his administration has already vowed to veto.
The law declares a “budgetary emergency” in the university system and instructs the Executive branch to update salaries based on accumulated inflation since December 2023, which totals 144 percent. In addition, it proposes that the government update the amounts of university operating expenses on a bimonthly basis.
With 57 votes in favour, 10 against and one abstention, the text “becomes law and will be communicated to the national executive branch,” indicated ruling party senator Bartolomé Abdala, who led the chamber in the absence of Vice-President Victoria Villarruel.
Cabinet Chief Guillermo Francos, said last week that if the law was approved it would be vetoed by President Milei.
“Any regulation that implies an expense that does not have the corresponding resources, that does not have a line in the budget, will be vetoed by the Executive branch,” he told the TN television channel.
“The government's fundamental policy is to balance public accounts,” he added.
During the debate, several opposition senators denied that the law would compromise fiscal balance and stressed that, according to data from the Congressional Budget Office, it would involve spending equivalent to 0.14 percent of GDP.
“There is somewhere to get it, but the national government's priority is to take taxes away from the richest,” alleged opposition senator Anabel Fernández Sagasti (Unión por la Patria) during debate.
In the early hours of the morning, the Senate also rejected a key decree through which Milei’s government had allocated 100 billion pesos (US$102.1 million at the official exchange rate) in “reserved funds” to Argentina’s intelligence services, the newly renamed State Intelligence Secretariat (SIDE).
The 49-11 vote (with one abstention) confirmed the decree’s repeal. It had already been rejected in the lower house. No decree prior had been overturned by both chambers since they were introduced in the 1994 reform of the Constitution.
Milei’s office repudiated the decision, accusing senators of “failing the Argentine people” and holding the lawmakers responsible for “any event that occurs until SIDE is properly funded.”
Presidential Spokesperson Manuel Adorni complained that the nation’s intelligence services would be “left unprotected by a group of irresponsible people.”
The government argued that the funds would help reform SIDE and give it “a professional profile, focused on protecting the Argentine people from both internal and external threats, settling one of the great debts of democracy.”
Argentina is currently in recession, with annual inflation running at 236 percent. Poverty affects more than half of the population, according to private studies.
Eighty-five percent of university professors do not earn enough to exceed the level that defines poverty, compared to 60 percent of non-teaching staff, according to data from the National Interuniversity Council (CIN).
If the government vetoes the law, it would become the second piece of legislation blocked by Milei, who on Monday last week vetoed an 8.1-percent increase in pensions that easily cleared Congress.
Senators also approved a bill to implement the single paper ballot (Boleta Única de Papel, BUP) for national elections from 2025 onwards.
The proposal, which passed 39-30, had previously been approved by the lower house in 2022 and it will now return to the Chamber of Deputies so amendments can be approved.
According to the initiative, the National Electoral Chamber (CNE) will be responsible for designing ballots, with electoral boards in charge of adapting the ballot to the electoral offering in each district.
The Interior Ministry, through the National Electoral Directorate (DINE), will be responsible for printing and distributing ballots throughout the country.
– TIMES/AFP/NA/PERFIL
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