There is a crucial aspect that usually goes unnoticed both in political analysis and in popular sentiment: it is repeated that Javier Milei He promised an adjustment and has fulfilled it. However, what is omitted – whether intentionally to establish a lie, or because the speech has managed to penetrate public opinion – is that the President lied. During his electoral campaign, and even while in government, He repeatedly stated that the adjustment was “going to be paid for by politics, not by the people.”.
The facts belie this promise. According to a CEPA report November 2024, of every $100 adjusted in the first ten months of 2024, $24.2 came from cuts in pensions, $23.6 from public works, $12.8 from social benefits (such as allowances, non-contributory pensions and social security benefits). PAMI), $12.7 in subsidies and $12.6 in State operating expenses, mainly salaries.
The anger against retirees is particularly evident. This sector, one of the most vulnerable and which most supported the president, was the most punished. Recently, we learned about the limitation on access to certain free medications: another lie from Milei, since in the presidential debate he had expressed that he would not cut their subsidies.. Or were retirees part of that empty signifier called “caste”?
The cuts in public works should not go unnoticed either. The paralysis of public works did not translate into the elimination of corruption derived from non-transparent tenders, but rather it stopped the construction of key infrastructure for the country’s development, such as routes, roads and bridges. This cut is part of an economic policy that led to the closure of 16,500 small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs)while facilitating imports, maintaining high taxes on national companies and promoting an uncompetitive exchange rate, making Argentina increasingly expensive to produce and live.
Finally, the adjustment of the State’s operating expenses, although presented as a measure of administrative optimization, hides a much starker reality: the mass dismissal of state workers. What is initially framed as a rational adjustment becomes a dismantling of the state apparatus. This contradiction, paradoxically, is consistent with the speech of the President, who during the campaign stated that his objective was to “dynamite the State.”
Now, where should Argentina go? I would like to answer this question by referring to what we proposed in the campaign: the government plan that the Radical Civic Union presented for the period 2023-2027. In our vision, economic stabilization is a key objective, along with the promotion of private investment and job creation. However, this does not mean resorting to large investment incentive systems such as RIGI, much less condescending money laundering without control over the origin of the funds.
Today, the reality is different. Argentina lost more than 260 thousand jobs and, according to a Manpower Group report, the outlook for employment in 2025 is the worst in the world. Instead of creating genuine employment, we witnessed an economic model that, when adjusted, drastically reduced investment in key areas such as infrastructure, education and science, sectors that the UCR had identified as fundamental to the country’s development.
While the Milei government cuts subsidies and reduces budgets in these essential sectors, we propose a comprehensive plan to promote the knowledge economy, with clear incentives for investment in technology and quality education. This strategy not only seeks to create future jobs, but also strengthen strategic sectors that generate added value and competitiveness for our nation.
The government mainly favored companies in the energy sector, with an extractivist approach that did not benefit SMEs, which represent close to 90% of registered employment in the country. In contrast, we defend a Modern labor and tax legislation, which protects the rights of workersbut that also favors the growth of SMEs. Our vision was not only adjustment, but growth, based on investment, public-private cooperation and the generation of added value.
The direction we are taking, no matter how much we try to consolidate a discourse different from reality, is not the one Milei promised during the campaign. This path takes us to an Argentina in which there will be more rich people, but also more excluded. In this sense, a recent post by Carlos Rodríguez on the social network X is very interesting, in which he questioned how, if the future of the country was going to be in the extraction of minerals, people would benefit from said model. It is worth clarifying, in case someone does not know who this is, that Carlos Rodríguez is an orthodox economist, possibly the greatest exponent of Chicago School in Argentina, that is, someone whose ideas are far from being Marxist or Keynesian, and are rather close to those of Milei. His questioning reflects the contradiction inherent in the model that the government is promoting, a model that not even the most faithful defenders of economic orthodoxy can sustain without doubt.
On this path of mendacity that Milei chosen to travel, the citizens are left on the sidelines: those who voted for him and also those who he does not represent. The year ends. Let’s hope the lies too.
Hernán Rossi is Secretary General of the UCR National Convention.
Source: Ambito
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