Javier Milei suffered a humbling defeat on Thursday as the Senate vowed to overturn a presidential veto for the first time in 22 years.
In a major political blow for the Casa Rosada, senators moved to reject Milei’s striking down of the Disability Emergency Law, meaning that the bill must now become law.
It is the first time Congress has successfully overturned a veto since Milei took office in December 2023. The last time it rejected such a move was March 2002.
Even more damaging for the government was the margin of the defeat: 63 votes in favour, with just seven against. The opposition Peronist bloc managed to win the support of UCR, PRO and provincial centrist senators, with the ruling La Libertad Avanza party only succeeding in bringing PRO senator Carmen Álvarez Rivero into their camp.
Outside of Congress, hundreds of disabled campaigners and their families and supporters celebrated the result.
“It brings me great happiness…so that people with disabilities can live as they should,” said Trinidad Freiberg, a 23-year-old music therapist for children with disabilities.
Before Thursday, Congress had not rejected a total presidential veto since March 12, 2003. That was during the transitional administration of then-president Eduardo Duhalde, who took office on January 1, 2002, after Fernando de la Rúa resigned during the 2001-2002 economic crisis.
The bill, which increases funding for people with disabilities, was previously approved by Congress in July.
The law – declaring an emergency in the care of people with disabilities – moves to regularise overdue back payments of health benefits, update fees for service providers and guarantee them until December 2026, extendable until 2027.
It also proposes a reform of the non-contributory pension system, strengthens the role of the ANDIS national disability agency and reinstates a mandatory employment quota for people with disabilities.
UCR Senator Maximiliano Abad said Milei’s veto had “stunned” him. “They are asking us to allocate resources when they have not presented a budget in two years. There is no contradiction between taking care of public accounts and guaranteeing basic rights,” he told the chamber.
Peronist representatives leant heavily into the criticism, with Senator Eugenia Duré describing Milei as “the cruelest” president since the return of democracy in 1983. Eduardo ‘Wado’ De Pedro followed the same line, calling the libertarian “brutal” and “cynical.”
Milei has previously described the bill as “irresponsible” and says it will damage his bid to balance Argentina’s books.
He indicated n an interview in August that if his veto were overturned, he would take the matter to court as he pursues the eradication of Argentina’s long-standing budget deficit.
“There is no money,” his government has declared, in a decision that sparked protests.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the total fiscal cost of these initiatives could range from 2.4 trillion pesos (0.28 percent of GDP) to 4.3 trillion pesos (0.51 percent of GDP).
The reversal comes at a perilous moment for the government, which is plagued by a bribery scandal in the National Disability Agency that allegedly implicates Presidential Chief-of-Staff Karina Milei, the head of state’s sister and closest ally.
Milei took office in December 2023, having wielded a live chainsaw during his successful election campaign to symbolise his vow to slash state spending. He has suspended public works projects, laid off tens of thousands of civil servants, gutted state agencies and reduced aid.
Argentina’s crisis-hit economy registered its first budget surplus in 14 years in 2024, and annual inflation fell to 39.4 percent in June – down from 211 percent at the end of 2023 and 118 percent last year.
But the measures were blamed for tipping millions more people into poverty in the first half of 2024, and brought tens of thousands onto the streets in protest.
– TIMES/NA/AFP
