President Javier Milei's government has confirmed that the head of state will veto a Senate bill to boost pensions by 8.1 percent, claiming that that lawmakers who voted for it are only trying to "destroy" his economic programme.
“The President is committed with Argentines to maintain the fiscal surplus at any cost and he will do so,” stated Milei’s administration in a press release published on social media.
“Congress, in an act of demagogical populism, approved an irresponsible, illegal and unconstitutional bill which establishes exorbitant expenses without its proper budgetary item, which necessarily implies for the government to once again fall into the old practice of printing money, increasing taxes of indebtedness, which are the same prescriptions that have led us to failure over the last 100 years," it read.
The bill establishes a monthly update based on the latest Consumer Price Index (CPI) data. n addition, it adds an extra compensation of 8.1 percent, since the government granted 12.5 percent previously, which does not cover the 20.6-percent inflation in January.
In order to prevent the update of the basic food basket from being out of synch, they chose to push a mínimum of 1.09 percent in that direction.
The President’s Office stressed that “this law entails an additional expense of 1.2 percent of the GDP, or 25 percent of the GDP in dynamic terms, forcing the State into debt which will have to be paid in the future by Argentine youths who, thanks to measures such as this one, today are mostly poor."
“While they accuse this government of liquefying pensioners, pensions have risen by 5 percent in real terms since January while we reduced expenditure and destroyed inflation”, it indicated.
It further classified the bill as “a moral con, an act of populist demagogy and fiscal irresponsibility."
Macri meeting
Former president Mauricio Macri made his support to President Javier Milei’s decision to veto the pension reform voted by the Senate public. “For the welfare of our pensioners and their grandchildren, I support President Milei’s veto”, he posted on X on Friday morning.
The post marks consistency with their meeting on Wednesday in Olivos, the same day the PRO joined the opposition parliamentary offensive against the Emergency Decree which allocated funds reserved for the SIDE Intelligence Secretariat.
He aimed at those who votes for the reform. “Most of the senators who now express their concern over pensioners’ income are the same ones who vehemently objected to the closing and sale of deficit-ridden state companies full of corruption”, he held.
In addition, amid a university conflict over financing, which led to forceful measures, he said “it is worth remembering that those very senators approved the indiscriminate opening of public universities, a source of squander, and fronts for patronage and phenomenal corruption”.
He concluded the post thus: “They were the ones who approved the deficit which impoverished Argentines. The need for a fiscal balance is no longer disputable”.
After on Thursday the Senate approved by over two thirds the bill to update pensions by 8.1 percent in addition to a monthly update pegged to the CPI, President Javier Milei informed that he would first use his power of veto to dismiss it.
“The sole purpose of the bill approved today by Congress is to destroy the government’s economic programme”, stated a press release from the President’s Office account near midnight.
Mauricio Macri’s post in support of the veto of the new pension formula by Javier Milei comes as a way to cool down the public tension of their relationship after PRO opposed Emergency Decree 656/2024 which allocated 100 million pesos of reserved funds to the SIDE State Intelligence Secretariat.
Nevertheless, the new post comes in the context of an urgent meeting conducted last Wednesday evening at the Olivos Residence, hours after the ruling party received the legislative setback after the rejection of the Decree. They had a one-on-one meeting there and reaffirmed their relationship remaining on “good terms”.
Everything seems to suggest that it was a manoeuvre orchestrated from Casa Rosada to resume approaches to Macrism, an alliance not yet consolidated due to the former chief executive’s differences with some of Milei’s closest collaborators, such as Santiago Caputo, Karina Milei and even Patricia Bullrich.
“The relationship is still the same, on good terms”, sources consulted by Noticias Argentinas stated about the meeting, who thus sought to clear the versions of unrest between them after the PRO deputies’ “switch”, when they did not support the delivery of funds to the SIDE’s new structure.
--TIMES/NA
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