Amidst the chaos that arose Javier Milei’s government agenda and a war of crossed versions, the ruling party decided to simplify it Dealing with the 2026 budget in the Senate and approve it as it came from the House of Representatives, without Chapter XI, which repealed university and disability funding laws.
The Senate Budget and Finance Committee met this Friday morning and received Finance Minister Carlos Gumerman and other officials from the Ministry of Commerce. After the presentations, the ruling party received 11 signatures to win the majority opinion for the project.
The plan of the government bloc led by Patricia Bullrich is to pass it in the chamber on December 26thbut the news is that they will not try to reintroduce the chapter rejected by the Chamber of Deputies, the fall of which was very bad news for the Milei government because, as they say, without the repeal of these laws There will be no balancing of the budget.
Despite the fact that the government has leaked in all possible ways that it wants to re-include the repeal of these laws in the 2026 budget, Bullrich let the Casa Rosada know that there would be no votes for this task and that the safest way to pass the law before the end of the year would be to deal with it as it came from the deputies, as he learned. iProfessional.
Budget 2026: The change in strategy in the Senate for adoption
Two senators from La Libertad Avanza (LLA) confirmed to this medium that the decision of continue with the 2026 budget without further changes, although a few hours earlier the Minister of the Interior, Diego Santili, had confirmed that an attempt would be made to reintroduce the chapter that had fallen in the Chambers of Deputies. “This point may lead to an imbalance in the future, which I believe needs to be corrected in the Senate,” the official said.
In the Senate, however, they chose the safer route. “We will not try to reinsert Chapter XI because what is important is that there is a budget law“, they emphasized in the bloc. The 37 votes for the approval of the project, as presented by the deputies on December 26, have already been secured, as they emphasize.
The ruling party acknowledges that it will also try to “find a way out of the deficit caused by this”. “University and Disabled Funding Laws,” which Milei vetoed, but Congress ratified, but not through the 2026 budget, as the administration had tried.
Instead, they consider submitting a project to change later. According to the sources consulted, Bullrich has already begun to discuss this alternative, which does not jeopardize the sanctioning of the 2026 budget, with the Minister of Economy Luis Caputo.
Why did the ruling party decide to move forward with the budget as presented by MPs?
The difficulty that the ruling party faced was that if the Senate reintroduced the chapter, the text would go into something of a loop The government would be left without a budget law for the third year.
Bullrich saw this as the main risk. The head of the LLA bloc finally took responsibility for parliamentary strategy. First he postponed until February the labor reform, the progress of which had been in doubt due to the failure of the ruling party’s alliances in Thursday’s chaotic dawn session of deputies, and now he persuaded the Casa Rosada to do so Change strategy to secure the 2026 budget.
And beyond that In the dialogue opposition blocs, several senators already assumed that they would not give their votes to the ruling party if it tried to make new changes to the budget, in particular to re-include the defunding of universities and the disability emergency.an argument that Milei has already lost three times in a row in Congress.
“When they open the project, we will also request further changes,” said a UCR senator iProfessional. That was the other risk Bullrich faced in the upper house with the plan that Casa Rosada was trying to push through. For this reason, the ruling party senators also decided to play it safe and leave the 2026 budget as it is to ensure its approval.
The other key points of the controversial chapter
With the fall of Chapter One, one of them was this Elimination of the expansion of the cold zone regime.
More important, however, was the article that allowed the government to calculate the Revenue that electricity distributors no longer receive during the tariff emergency and use it as a loan to offset the distributors’ debts to Cammesa, which amount to approx $400 million.
All of this has now been removed from the budget, as has the article in which the national government committed to it pay off the debts through co-participation that he keeps up with that City of Buenos Airesa claim by the PRO.
With the idea of passing the 2026 budget law as presented by the MPs, the ruling party will try to resolve the other outstanding issues either with separate bills or, if possible, with resolutions.
“We must first pass the budget law and then use the tools available to the executive,” he confirmed iProfessional another source from La Libertad Avanza who also recognized this The priority is to pass the budget law, because it would be a “very bad sign” if Milei were to govern for another year without forecasting spending and resources.
In the Chamber of Deputies, chaired by Martín Menem, where the budget discussion was dissolved and ended with a different result than Milei expected, the LLA insists that the Senate can make changes, pointing out that in this case they would discuss it again on December 29. But the senators don’t want anything to do with it at the moment.
“Fiscal innocence” is also making progress in the Senate
Just before passing the 2026 budget, senators also signed off on the Justice and Crime Commission Project “Fiscal Innocence”, better known as “Cushion Dollar”.
The initiative is one of the instruments with which the Ministry of Economic Affairs is turning things around formal circuit the dollars the Argentines have “under the mattress”. The project shields the new, higher avoidance thresholds set by ARCA to guarantee savers that they will not be pursued by the state treasury in the future.
During the debate, radical Senator Maximiliano Abad celebrated the paradigm shift proposed by the project because “it recognizes that taxpayers are innocent until the Ministry of Finance proves otherwise with documents and evidence.”
Despite it, The senator expressed concern about updating the fines without the project identifying differences between micro, small, medium and large taxpayers. “A warehouse or a neighborhood kiosk is not the same as an SME or a large corporation,” warned Abad.
In this regard, Bullrich assured that the Executive will analyze the issue during the regular meetings in 2026. “We are ready to work on a solution for very small taxpayers so that the fines correspond to their capital and their economic reality,” he clarified, also trying to ensure the approval of this project on December 26.
The price of the dollar and inflation in 2026: the main points of the budget
Milei ruled without a budget in his first year because in 2023 he had agreed with Sergio Massa (his rival for the runoff election) to suspend the treatment of the project until the next president is chosen. The surprise of his victory led him to expand the previous year’s law and administer items by decree and delegated authority.
In 2024, the ruling party immediately withdrew its spending and income project, saying the opposition wanted to push through changes that would lead to a budget deficit. This year, Milei finally moved forward with the 2026 budget — partly because he had won more seats in the midterm elections, and mostly because of pressure from the IMF and the United States to start showing “governance.”.
The governors also wanted Milei to issue his first budget law to have a clearer link to the government’s economic framework Distribution of resources between provinces. The project puts the nation-state’s total current and capital expenditure for 2026 at $148 billion and foresees a surplus financial result of $2.7 billion.
In addition, the text estimates annual inflation of 10.1%, economic growth of 5%, a primary budget surplus of 2.2% of GDP and one dollar at $1,423 for December 2026. This point caused a stir in the debate as the government recently changed the price ranges for the currency, which is already above this level.
Fuel taxes and sensitive points for education and science
In matters Trade balanceThe 2026 budget envisages a 10.6% increase in exports and an 11% increase in imports. On the other hand, the project exempts diesel imports from paying taxes on liquid fuels and carbon dioxide.
This measure also extends to commercialization on the domestic market in 2026 to cover peaks in energy demand that cannot be covered by local production. The tax exemption for renewable energies will also be extended until 2045.
Aside from that, The text repeals articles of various laws related to the financing of education, science and defense. Among them is the one that forces the state to allocate at least 6% of GDP to the education system. This article was among those at risk if the ruling party in the Senate decided to “open” the project to changes again.
However, the decision is currently before the Senate to proceed with the approval of the 2026 budget without any changes other than those already made by the Chamber of Deputies, in order to secure Javier Milei the first budget law of his government.
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