Libertarian President Javier Milei of Argentina presented the 2025 budget to Congress late Sunday, outlining policy priorities that reflected his key pledge to kill the country's chronic fiscal deficit and signaled a new phase of confrontation with lawmakers.
In an unprecedented move, Milei personally pitched the budget to Congress instead of his economy minister, lambasting Argentina's history of macroeconomic mismanagement and promising to veto anything that compromised his tough slog of tight fiscal policy.
The president's budget proposal followed a week of political clashes in the legislature - where Milei controls less than 15% of the seats - over spending increases that the administration warns would derail its IMF-backed "zero deficit" budget. Opposition parties have sought to pass laws to raise salaries and pensions with inflation to help hard-hit Argentines cope with brutal austerity.
"The cornerstone of this budget is the first truth of macroeconomics, a truth that for many years has been neglected in Argentina: that of zero deficit," Milei told lawmakers, facing a handful of empty seats as most of the hard-line opposition Peronist bloc, Union por la Patria, skipped his address. "Managing means cleaning up the balance sheet, deactivating the debt bomb that we inherited."
Milei's supporters interrupted his speech - packed with his usual libertarian talking points - with whoops and cheers.
