With the lowest rating, Milei presents the 2025 budget project

Buenos Aires. In front of a semi-empty chamber of deputies and senators due to the absence of opposition members, and using national television, which the vast majority of Argentines refused to watch last night by turning off their televisions at the same time that the far-right president Javier Milei began reading the budget project for 2025, achieving the lowest rating ever seen in similar circumstances, also dressed in the presidential sash and holding the cane, as when he took office, which is unusual, while in several neighborhoods the neighbors banged their empty pots and pans,

“Of a total of 257 deputies and 71 senators that make up both chambers, only 130 legislators attended, that is, a third. There were entire opposition benches that were absent, which was to be expected, but not even the allied legislators attended in their entirety,” said the website Política Argentina.

They also pointed out that not all cabinet ministers were involved, and that the lack of interest from the general public was also a factor. “According to Argentina’s audience measurement company, the rating on El Trece, the main open television channel, plummeted from 5 to 0.4 points as soon as Milei began to speak. An extreme case was that of Channel 9, which reached 0 points,” the company said.

The president did not provide important figures to define the economy he projects, but in this case he warned the provincial governments that they will have to adjust to 60 billion dollars, when the situation is already unlivable at a social level and the national government still owes them the money from the revenue sharing.

Milei added that with this new request to the provinces, spending can be reduced to 25 points of GDP next year. He even referred to the fact that public service rates are “given away” when they have shot up to such high figures that they have quintupled normal spending and announced that in 2025 all these rates will increase even more.

“The provincial leaders defined that the figure of 60 billion dollars in adjustments that the president is asking for is “absurd.” They agreed in stating that, with the “federalization” of the obligations and the reduction of national transfers, a reduction of that magnitude would be equivalent to “closing” the State,” reported the newspaper Página 12.

Among other words, Milei said that “managing is reducing the State to enlarge society” and said that she will veto all projects that threaten fiscal balance,” referring to the Executive Branch’s rejection of the pension reform that increased pension benefits. “Any expense that is created and does not explain from which existing budget item it will come, will be vetoed.”

It was also announced that only half of the budget needed by public universities would be allocated, in addition to the suspension of the Teacher Incentive Fund that has been in effect since January, which will deepen the conflict not only in this case with professors and students but also with the allied blocs of the UCR, Encuentro Federal and the Civic Coalition.

The truth is that the important polling firm Zuban Córdoba maintains that the lack of credibility of the population is getting worse every day, which in many aspects reaches important figures of up to 70 percent in the rejection of the government and that Milei believed that he would be heard by the entire country in his message in Congress “and ended up receiving the harshest message” with the television blackout, which achieved the lowest rating for a presidential speech.

Today, the governors, even those close to him, made their voices of protest heard and several of them considered that the national government is only interested in raising the money to pay the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the refinanced debt, which was left by Milei’s current partner, former President Mauricio Macri when his four-year administration ended in 2019.

Meanwhile, the convention of the Radical Civic Union (UCR) decided to suspend the five deputies who voted in favor of Milei’s veto against the retirement mobility law.

This led to a party crisis, while the president decided to invite the 87 legislators of Libertad Avanza, Propuesta Republicana (Pro) led by Macri and the five radicals, three of whom voted in favor of the veto and two who abstained, to eat a barbecue at the presidential residence to “celebrate that they had achieved a victory” over the retirees.

This is happening when there are several open cases against the brutal repression, which left wounded and injured among the elderly last Wednesday, in which the Minister of Security Patricia Bullrich is being sued.

The lawsuit filed by attorney Gregorio Dalbón, representing the family of ten-year-old Fabricia, who was attacked by a police officer who threw pepper spray with the new chemical into her eyes and who almost suffocated, was also made public.