To the economic deficit, 'the abandonment of the national State of its basic functions is added, the interruption of a thousand unfinished works in the provincial territory, and the cutting of non-automatic mandatory transfers,' states the Executive's budget. The political message from the Province insists that the budget's focus is on mitigating the social and productive damage caused by the recession. The Buenos Aires Executive affirms that 'the productive fabric is deteriorating at great speed, company closures are spreading throughout the territory, unemployment grows at the same rate as production is destroyed, family incomes are collapsing, and social vulnerability is multiplying.' In this way, the 2026 Budget is defined as a 'defense budget,' a term that summarizes the official position, where the largest spending item is explained by the obligation to sustain the containment network against the effects that the provincial administration attributes directly to decisions made by the Nation. This emergency forces the Province to allocate an overwhelming portion of its resources to daily operations. The attached annexes confirm the strategy: current expenditures (destined for salaries, services, social transfers, and the functioning of the state structure) will consume 39.86 trillion pesos, representing 92.6% of the total budget, a record figure that consolidates the focus on maintaining essential services and direct assistance. This focus on current spending comes at the expense of structural investment: capital spending (public works and direct investment) barely reaches 7.3% of the total. To cover this deficit, the Province sent the borrowing project to the Legislature, which amounts to 3,035 million dollars. The Kicillof government justifies this low investment with a direct criticism of the Casa Rosada. 'The Argentine economy is going through a state of emergency due to the crisis caused by the economic policies that the national government has been carrying out since December 2023,' begins the budgetary tool with which Kicillof proposes to resist the adjustment context. The need to 'shield' social spending and the state structure is based on the premise that the Buenos Aires territory is particularly vulnerable to the recession the country is going through. According to the official document, 'the province of Buenos Aires is not alien to this general situation, on the contrary: due to its own characteristics, crises are amplified.' The Buenos Aires 2026 Budget project that will come before the legislature next Wednesday was conceived by Governor Axel Kicillof as his main political weapon to confront the austerity model of Javier Milei's government. The message included in the 'law of laws' is clear and serves as a political justification for spending, but it does not avoid confrontation and establishes a damning diagnosis of the situation.
