Understand the comings and goings of Auxílio Brasil in the Bolsonaro government

The submission of the Budget proposal for 2023 with an average value of BRL 405 for Auxílio Brasil, less than the current minimum BRL 600, opens wide the degree of exposure to which already vulnerable families are subjected and who depend on the program to survive.

It will be the fourth year in a row of uncertainties about the amount available for buying food and paying bills.

Since 2020, with the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, low-income Brazilian families have been living on a “roller coaster of poverty”, as researchers Marcelo Neri and Marcos Hecksher classified in a work published by FGV Social.

“The problem with these fluctuations is the low capacity of the poorest to deal with them, generating extreme states of unmet needs”, say the researchers, citing the low access of these families to emergency sources of resources, such as credit.

The comings and goings of the government in recent years on aid:

• In april 2020, shortly after the beginning of the health emergency, Congress approved an emergency aid of R$ 600 for three months, then extended for another two months, until August. From Septemberthe amount was reduced to R$ 300 per month.
• At the end of 2020despite warnings from experts about the continuity of the economic and social effects of the pandemic, emergency aid came to an end without the government making efforts to renew it.
• Emergency aid payments were only resumed in april 2021, after the approval of a PEC by Congress authorizing spending outside the spending ceiling. The amount was reduced to R$150 to R$375, depending on family composition. Initially, four installments were planned, later extended for another three months.
• In november 2021, the government began paying Auxílio Brasil (the new Bolsa Família), with an average initial benefit of BRL 224 – less than Bolsonaro’s BRL 400 pledge at the time. The main impediment to the government’s plans was the need to have a new source of revenue to fund the permanent increase in spending.
• In december 2021, the president edited an MP (provisional measure) implementing an extraordinary installment, in the amount necessary to reach the floor of R$ 400, which would last until the end of this year. Later, this portion was converted into permanent, thanks to a loophole created in the Constitution for the expansion of spending in 2022.
• With the elections approaching and the increase in food and fuel prices, Bolsonaro sponsored another PEC, which again increased the value of the social benefit to R$ 600 from august 2022, but with a limited duration to the end of this year. It is not yet known where the money will come from to fund the maintenance of this amount for beneficiaries of Auxílio Brasil from 2023.