Mexico Bill Giving President Emergency Budget Powers Moves Ahead
Mexico Bill Giving President Emergency Budget Powers Moves Ahead
(Bloomberg) -- Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s bid to get emergency powers to reassign government spending amid a collapsing economy is moving ahead in congress over the opposition’s objections about its constitutionality.
Key lawmakers from the left-wing ruling party are backing the president’s bill introduced in the lower house of congress on Thursday. While the opposition argues that the bill may violate the constitutional mandate for lawmakers to approve annual spending plans, Lopez Obrador’s Morena Party has majorities in both houses after an alliance with minority parties.
Mario Delgado, the head of Morena in the lower house, said he will support the bill because the government needs to be able to adjust the federal budget during a crisis in order to fund priorities such as health care and credits to small businesses.
“This opens up the opportunity for us to give our country a new legal framework to deal with these emergencies, so that the government has the possibility of acting opportunistically,” Delgado said late Tuesday in a Twitter video. “Ignore the dishonest campaigns of the right. We will act with great responsibility.”
Still, the lawmaker said they’ll push to introduce some changes to the bill to make sure it doesn’t break with current legislation.
Mexico is facing in 2020 one of the deepest recessions in its history as an already weak economy can barely cope with the impact of the coronavirus outbreak. Lopez Obrador has so far refused to use debt to fund a stimulus package and has instead pledged to cut spending in some government areas.
The Mexican economy is seen contracting 6.7% this year, deeper than during the devastating Tequila Crisis of the mid 1990s, according to the average of analysts in the latest Citibanamex survey.
Barclays economist Marco Oviedo said the bill would likely see changes introduced to make it more politically palatable, including clearer definitions about the reallocation of funds.
“It is a matter of checks and balances set in the Constitution,” he said in an interview. “An executive with full powers over the public expenditures goes against that spirit.”
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