In consultations carried out on December 1, 2023 and February 5, 2024, before and after the change of government, it emerged that in the Senate of the Nation 451 contracts were reduced, but 81 employees became part of the permanent staff of the Upper House, which currently has 2,769 agents out of a total of 4,458.
For its part, the chamber of deputies remained the same, with 4,701 total employees, of which 2,239 are permanent and 2,462 temporary.
But the Chamber of Deputies of the Nation still does not provide public information as the Senate does.
Indeed, for several years now the Upper House website has allowed access to the payroll of permanent, temporary and contracted personnel.
In the first two cases, which are the majority, it includes information on the category/remuneration and dependency of the staff.
The dependency allows us to know the place where an employee is assigned and thus the number who work in a department, commission, party bloc, national senator, etc.
Although the transparency of the Senate's information is worth highlighting, it reveals an outrageous level of bureaucracy that is also associated with a criterion of public employment with political appointments.
This also happens in the rest of the organizations that make up the National Legislative Branch.
In comparative perspective, the Congress of the Argentine Nation has half as many parliamentarians and twice as many employees as the Bundestag of the Federal Republic of Germany.
In matters of legislative austerity, libertarians could draw inspiration from the Argentine socialist parliamentarians of the early 20th century.
For example, on February 3, 1915, the first socialist senator of America, Enrique del Valle Iberlucea, intervened in a legislative debate on the national budget, stating that
“if we harbor the firm and sincere intention of introducing appreciable economies into this Budget, “We must set an example by considerably reducing the Congressional annex.”
In this regard, both Martín Menem in Deputies and Victoria Villarruel in the Senate of the Nation, can initiate a political-administrative reform in the National Legislative Branch that considers the following: a) Freeze the vacancies of the permanent staff of the PLN and, As is happening in Chile, establish that from now on all positions of this type be filled by competition based on an objective profile;
b) Following the Australian example, the PLN should establish a provision that prevents nepotism;
c) End charity with taxpayer money and eliminate subsidies, study scholarships and ex-gratia pensions;
d) Consider eliminating the printing press, in the era of digitalization and environmental questions;
and e) The same with the body of stenographers, designed for another era.
More than a century ago, the socialist parliamentarian Nicolás Repetto justified the need to carry out layoffs in the Legislative Branch, stating: “
I believe that those worthy men who were laid off will now find the opportunity to apply their skills, if they have them, or to develop new ones, in much nobler occupations than this one.”
Gabriel Salvia is General Director of CADAL (www.cadal.org).