I & I Editorial BoardArgentina’s President Javier Milei continues to govern in ways that conservatives in America can only dream of. Now he’s come up with a new proposal that the U.S. would do well to copy.
When Milei came into office, he promised to slash government spending, balance the budget, embrace free trade, deregulate the economy, and get hyperinflation under control. (“Experts” such as Paul Krugman said it would end in disaster.)
Milei’s lived up to his promises. Month-over-month inflation was running at 25% when he took office; it’s below 2% now. Argentina ran a budget surplus in 2024, the first time since 2008. The poverty rate has plunged, and in July, the country got its third credit upgrade in three months.
Even the Washington Post marveled that “The message from the ratings agencies is that President Javier Milei’s market-oriented reforms are working.”
Now he’s put forth a plan designed to keep Argentina’s government in check for the long term.
“He’s calling it the grillete fiscal or the ‘fiscal shackle,’ and it’s part of a larger reform of the Central Bank’s charter that he’s sending to the country’s Congress, possibly for a mid-to-late-August vote,” writes Sarah Anderson at PJ Media, which is where we first learned of this proposal.
Under this plan, if the government runs a deficit for several months in a row, the Congress gets a warning, then the “shackle” kicks in, suspending non-essential government functions and basically freezing everything else in place. No new spending, no new contracts, no new hires, until lawmakers get the budget back in balance.
But the kicker is that, while the government is shackled, top politicians — ministers, undersecretaries, senators, etc., even the president — won’t get paid.
“For the first time in our history, if politics doesn’t do its homework, politics will pay the cost — not the people,” Milei said when he introduced the proposal.
Milei isn’t the first person to think up an idea like this. Since 2013, Montana Sen. Steve Daines has been introducing a bill that “withholds members of Congress’s salaries in each chamber if the Office of Management and Budget does not certify that the chamber has adopted a balanced budget. The bill also requires that revenue increases be agreed upon by an affirmative three-fifths vote in each chamber.”
But his bill would require Congress only to pass a budget that would balance 10 years down the road.
In May, the Senate unanimously passed a resolution that would withhold members’ pay during a government shutdown. But that applies only to senators, and the senators can easily pass another resolution suspending it when the time comes.
Of course, there’s no guarantee that Argentinian legislators will vote for a plan that puts their livelihoods on the line, but given Milei’s success in delivering for this country, they’d be crazy not to.
If they do, President Donald Trump and U.S. lawmakers should take note.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
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After reading this article, one would think this would be a great idea for getting our financial house in order. However, given the current climate in DC, this would be nothing more than a pipe dream. There are too many parts and factions that would derail this idea if proposed in congress. Personally, I don’t even believe DJT could orchestrate a deal like what the Argentine president has done.
Makes so much sense not to pay the politicians for the very problems they alone have caused.
In my city of Philadelphia, politicians squander half of our taxes on half of the unneeded and past their prime 124 departments, committees, and agencies we are paying for in the budget of $6.99 billion. Half is squandered and our politicians’s solution, instead, is to raise school and property taxes and Uber fees, airport fees and fees on everything. All but one of these politicians is a Democrat. We live in a circular firing squad of more and more taxes in our city government without any fiscal accountability.