MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Milei pledges to veto any bill challenging the zero fiscal deficit

“I will veto everything; I don't give three fucks,” Milei explained during a conference

Argentine President Javier Milei dawned quite verbacious Wednesday after the Lower House passed Tuesday a bill to increase the wages of senior citizens which are also lagging behind the country's inflation and other price adjustments announced for the coming days: “I will veto everything, I don't give a damn,” said Milei, who also insisted he would stand by his administration's zero fiscal deficit policy.

Milei also pledged to copycat the style of Nayib Bukele, who ruled El Salvador since 2019 “by pure veto.” The Libertarian leader also criticized lawmakers for having granted themselves an 80% wage increase and boasted that in addition to the “25 thousand state employees” already laid off “we are going to fire 50 thousand more” by further applying his so-called “chainsaw” policies.

During an appearance at the Latam Economic Forum in Buenos Aires, Milei recalled that Argentina had recorded 113 years out of 123 of numbers in the red, and pledged to “continue to fight” to reverse that trend.

Regarding how updating the earnings of senior citizens would affect the country's coffers, Milei explained that “every time that the fiscal degenerates of politics want to break it [the fiscal balance], I will veto everything; I don't give three fucks.”

He also underlined that old-school politicians would always get in the way of any measure trying to curb their “put an end to curros,” which in Argentine slang stands for fudgy side businesses, and insisted on dubbing lawmakers as “degenerates” who “are seeking to break the fiscal balance.” Hence, he recalled that “each thing that the [Salvadoran] fiscal degenerates did, [Bukele] vetoed them all, which is what I am going to do.”

Milei also defended Human Capital Minister Sandra Pettovelllo who has taken considerable flak for irregularities in distributing food to the needy and hiring outsourced staffers. In the President's view, those “thieves who lost their jobs were going to get angry and they are operating on her” (Argentine slang for badmouthing).

On Tuesday, Congresspeople from the Radical Civic Union (UCR), Kirchnerism, and other opposition forces passed by 162 votes to 72 an 8% increase in pensions which the Libertarian administration had already opposed. The initiative meant introducing a new formula to update pensions different from the one Milei set forth through the Emergency Decree (DNU) 274/2024 in March this year. The Senate is not to discuss the bill.