National Deputy Esteban Paulón stated that the Government and the ruling bloc in Congress mistakenly believed that the electoral results and the strengthening of the bloc gave them a mandate to 'do anything' during the Budget treatment. According to the legislator, this 'go for broke' attitude led to the fall of key articles and a legislative defeat that hurts the fiscal objectives of the Executive, after attempting to force the approval of entire chapters without the necessary dialogue to reach 129 votes. 'There was no need to try to sneak in through the window and with almost no debate; when you bet it all, you can go home with everything, but you can also go home with nothing,' he sentenced regarding the fall of chapter 11. Regarding the parliamentary dynamics, Paulón criticized that the Government preferred to vote on closed chapters instead of individual articles, which ended up overturning measures that had consensus, such as the de-indexation of allocations and the elimination of subsidies for the 'cold zone.' 'For the Government, these laws represented 1.8% of GDP, but the technical office gives 0.4%; it is a mechanism that nobody questions,' detailed Paulón. In his view, the problem is not strictly one of resources, but of an 'obsession' with not allowing Congress to set the rules, even on sensitive issues that generate 'a lot of anguish in many families,' such as disability benefits. 'The budget is now a bit wounded in its objective of achieving a fiscal surplus,' warned the legislator, who also extended his criticism to the treatment of the labor reform in the Senate: 'If you treat a project that wasn't even drawn up in Congress because it comes from the Executive behind closed doors, you generate a lot of annoyance even among your own.' The Santa Fe deputy also questioned the centralization of decision-making in the Casa Rosada and what he considers a systematic underestimation of the role of Parliament. 'The strengthening within Parliament was celebrated almost like a goal in the World Cup, but that doesn't exempt you from having to build bridges of dialogue and generate consensus,' Paulón maintained during an interview on Radio Rivadavia, to which the Argentine News Agency had access. The deputy recounted that the discontent erupted when the ruling bloc at the last minute included the controversial article 75, which affected the financing of disability and universities, a maneuver he described as a 'slap in the face' to Congress. For Paulón, governing without dialogue weakens institutional quality: 'Any law, no matter how good it is, if you approve it with forceps, is difficult to implement and is born managed.' Finally, the legislator highlighted the discrepancy in the numbers handled by the Executive compared to the technical reports from the Congressional Budget Office.
