Milei criticizes the Senate’s rejection of a decree that deregulates the Argentine economy, says he will continue with reforms

A few hours after the Argentine Senate rejected a key decree to deregulate the country’s economy, President Javier Milei criticized the decision of the opposition, which dominates that chamber, and said that he will fight to continue with the adjustments undertaken by his government to contain the acute crisis affecting the country.

On Thursday night, the Senate did not approve the megadecree (DNU) promulgated in December by Milei. The rule was rejected by 42 votes to 25 – there were four abstentions – but it can only be definitively discarded if it is also rejected by the Chamber of Deputies, which has yet to put it to a vote. Milei’s Libertad Avanza political group is also in the minority in that chamber.

“What happened makes it clear that there are people who are more concerned about maintaining their caste privileges than moving Argentina forward,” the president stated on La Red radio, alluding to the traditional political class that he constantly criticizes.

Since the promulgation of the decree, the Government was able to advance in the implementation of many articles that determine, for example, the deregulation of health services and the closure or privatization of public companies, although it received a court ruling against it that invalidated the labor reform. .

Milei’s government seeks to change the way the country has been run for years and leave behind strong state interventionism to move towards a free market economy, eliminating strong regulations in various areas.

By law, the decree requires validation by Congress. According to the rule, deputies and senators cannot modify the text and their power is to accept or reject it with the vote of half plus one of the members present in each chamber.

Milei also forwarded messages from his followers on X—formerly Twitter—questioning the legislators. “Traitors to the country”, “criminals” and “caste vs. people” were some of the expressions of supporters of the libertarian president against the opposition senators who gave the thumbs down to the decree called “bases for the reconstruction of the Argentine economy.”

“Now we have to go to the Chamber of Deputies… we are going to have to fight and we are confident,” said Milei, who was willing to follow the path of “confrontation” in case his policies encounter obstacles in The congress.

The presidential spokesman, Manuel Adorni, for his part ratified the government’s determination to carry out economic reforms and the reduction of public spending with the alleged purpose of ending rampant inflation.

“The zero deficit is non-negotiable; The reduction in inflation is non-negotiable, the sanitation of the Central Bank is non-negotiable; We are going to achieve it with or without the collaboration of those who yesterday tried once again to obstruct the path of change,” Adorni said.

A key, but controversial decree
The decree, which originally had more than 600 articles, establishes extensive deregulation of the economy by modifying or repealing hundreds of laws.

In labor matters, it limited the right to strike in essential activities such as hospital services, education and transportation. And it opened the way for new compensation mechanisms that will make laying off employees less costly.

The decree eliminated all price control tools; repealed the rental law so that terms and currency are freely defined between parties, modified the regulatory framework for private medicine so that companies set quota values ​​without prior authorization from the State, liberalized the aeronautical and satellite telecommunications market and limited controls about credit card issuing companies.

Privatizations of public companies and sports clubs were also enabled by the decree.

The initiative suffered a first setback in court with several rulings that kept suspended the articles referring to labor reform, deregulation of private medicine and public limited companies in football.

The adjustment of State spending promoted by Milei is unprecedented in the country, neither for its speed nor for all the sectors that are affected, since it cut subsidies and froze salaries in the midst of rampant inflation.

In an attempt to get the country out of the serious economic crisis, Milei devalued the local peso by more than 50% after taking office in December and managed to ensure that the fiscal balance and the trade balance showed favorable results in the first months of the year, but the adjustments They shot up annual inflation to 276% and poverty to 57%.

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