Milei’s party agreed Tuesday to remove the disability articles from its 2027 budget bill to win allied signatures on a committee report it aims to sign Wednesday, October 28, party and parliamentary sources said.
A committee report is the step before a vote of the full chamber, and Milei’s party, La Libertad Avanza, cannot get one in the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of Congress, without allies led by the center-right PRO and the Radical Civic Union (UCR). Treasury Secretary Carlos Guberman spoke by video call with the chamber’s president, Martín Menem, who then called the leaders of the allied party groups, according to parliamentary sources.
Allied groups had asked for the articles to go, and libertarian sources said the funding set in the permanent disability law, which the lower house passed last week by 237 votes to 9, would be written into the budget instead. The government’s party had already accepted most of the opposition’s changes to that law.
On Tuesday the Budget committee, whose debate opened on October 13, held an information session with two officials from the Deregulation Ministry. They said the government has eliminated about 81,000 national public-sector jobs since December 2023, and one said more could be cut. Peronist deputies questioned them about cuts to state services, and the leader of the main Peronist group, Germán Martínez, asked not to rush toward a report.
Figures in two allied party groups said the text is still open, and Clarín reported on Monday that without a deal the report could slip to mid-November. The party wants a full-chamber vote around November 18, after the US midterm elections and Pope Leo XIV’s November 8-11 visit.
If the lower house passes the bill, the Senate would have too little time before the regular session period ends on November 30, so Milei is expected to call extraordinary sessions, which a president convenes outside that period. The committee is due to meet at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, October 28.