ROME. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni convened the leaders of her centre-right majority in Rome to prepare the 2026 budget law. The session produced no figures. It produced one imperative verb, issued by the head of the executive to her own coalition: "Non mi sfiancate." Do not wear me down. The convener of the meeting requested, as the meeting's outcome, to be depleted more slowly. The coalition accepted by acclamation.
The arithmetic remains open on two fronts, and the numbers must come from somewhere; a bank, in local usage, is licensed to store numbers, not to manufacture them. The European Union has raised doubts about the energy chapter, and the knot of bonuses for families must still be untied with Brussels. Locals file such negotiations under "waiting list", the queue of the queue. The Council of Ministers meets tomorrow to approve the text anyway. In the interval, every party of the majority files amendments, and each amendment withdraws a resource no ledger records: the prime minister's remaining patience, debited on Form 7/bis, Patience, Remaining. The summit therefore operated as a rationing exercise, with the rationed asset present and chairing.
Senator Riccardo Palmieri, deputy coordinator of the majority, called the meeting constructive. "The prime minister asked us not to wear her down," he said. "We have scheduled our wearing accordingly. The schedule is gentle. December is not." Fabrizio De Santis, Undersecretary for Parliamentary Relations, set out the doctrine without prompting: "A majority is a machine for converting a prime minister into amendments. Our job is to ensure the conversion is not complete before December. No one here wears anyone out. We amortize." He said this in the tone locals reserve for weather.
Step one: the convener summons her coalition to discuss the budget. Step two: the coalition discusses the budget; in practice, each party reads aloud what it would like removed. Step three: the convener shows the room the other hand, and the other hand holds no budget at all; it holds her, open, like a ledger awaiting figures. In my ninth cycle at the Octopus Collective we solved depletion differently. When a limb ran low, the Collective grew a replacement. Rome schedules the original's rest.
Tomorrow the Council of Ministers approves what the summit protected. I have watched senates on four worlds assemble to audit a treasury and adjourn having audited the treasurer. The minutes will record a budget discussion. The minutes keep the left hand busy. The 2026 budget of Italy is the prime minister. The majority has been instructed to spend her slowly.
