Congress will have in amendments 74% of the amount that would bring Auxílio Brasil to R$ 600

Congress will control through parliamentary amendments R$38.8 billion from the 2023 Budget, according to a proposal presented by the Jair Bolsonaro government (PL) this Wednesday (31).

The amount represents 73% of the R$ 52.5 billion that would be demanded to ensure the continuity of the minimum benefit of R$ 600 in Auxílio Brasil. The increase was left out of the text, which provides for an average payment of R$ 405.

The amount reserved for the amendments is also double the forecast for public investments (such as the construction of highways and schools), estimated at R$ 20 billion.

The forecast of resources indicated by parliamentarians in 2023 is driven by the so-called rapporteur’s amendments, used as a bargaining chip in the government’s political negotiations to maintain a loyal allied base in the National Congress.

Although the rapporteur’s amendments were created in 2020, this is the first time that the amount to be used by congressmen is indicated at the beginning of the budget preparation process, in the text sent by the government.

Previously, these numbers were entered by the parliamentarians themselves during the course of Congress, usually through cuts in mandatory expenses (that is, that could not be reduced), resulting in disguised expenses.

In an attempt to stamp out a larger share of resources, Congress inserted in the LDO (Budget Guidelines Law) a calculation rule for the value of the rapporteur’s amendments: it must be equivalent to the sum of the individual and state bench amendments, instruments that already previously existed.

The change was sanctioned by President Jair Bolsonaro (PL). As the Budget foresees R$ 11.7 billion for individual amendments and R$ 7.7 billion for bench amendments, the resulting amount for the rapporteur’s amendments reached R$ 19.4 billion.

The total reserve of BRL 38.8 billion for amendments is BRL 22.5 billion higher than the previous budget proposal for 2022, and BRL 3.1 billion more than this year’s final Budget.

Although they are all amendments, there is a difference between them. While individual and bench amendments are distributed equally among congressmen, the rapporteur’s amendments tend to privilege allies of the government and of the presidents of the Chamber, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), and of the Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD-MG) .

Usually, the congressmen contemplated use the money to irrigate their electoral strongholds, financing the paving of streets or roads and the purchase of equipment and machines.

This Wednesday (31), the Sheet showed that Lira indicated resources from the rapporteur’s amendments to finance a work to pave a road near the deputy’s own farms, in the interior of Alagoas.

In April, the report also showed that the amendments were used to allocate R$ 26 million from the federal government to the purchase of robotics kits for schools in small towns in Alagoas that suffer from a series of deficiencies, such as the lack of computers, internet and even running water.

The boosted value of the amendments exceeds the R$ 20 billion reserved so far for public investments. Although the amendments can also finance investments, expanding this account, the amount foreseen by the Executive is generally associated with the financing of more structural projects. In this sense, the reserve is 17% lower than the BRL 24.1 billion foreseen in the submission of the 2022 Budget.

The total reserve for amendments also represents almost half of the R$ 83.1 billion foreseen for the Executive Branch’s discretionary expenses, which include investments and also the cost of the public machine.

In an attempt to promote greater alignment between the use of the amendments and the policies of the Executive Branch, the government distributed the R$ 19.4 billion of the rapporteur’s amendments among various budget items.

The proposal reserves a slice of R$ 10.4 billion for the Ministry of Health – an expense that was even accounted for by the government for compliance with the constitutional minimum in the area. Then, R$ 3.5 billion was foreseen to compose the reserve for readjustment to servers, within the accounts of the Ministry of Economy.

Funds were also set aside for rapporteur amendments in the ministries of Regional Development (R$1.5 billion), Citizenship (R$1.3 billion), Education (R$1 billion), Tourism (R$700 million) , Infrastructure (R$524 million), Communications (R$200 million) and Agriculture (R$83 million).

The special secretary for the Treasury and Budget, Esteves Colnago, stated that the distribution of amendments by the rapporteur per body was decided based on the history observed in previous years, respecting the constitutional norm that provides for the targeting of 50% of the amendments to the area of ​​Health. .

“We are incorporating, within the various bodies of the Executive Branch, these rapporteur amendments and seeking to look in the past where these rapporteur amendments were allocated. So we tried to be careful to allocate them where they are normally used”, he said.

There is, however, no legal command that obliges parliamentarians to follow this distribution proposed by the Economy. The secretary himself acknowledged that the numbers can be changed by Congress.

UNDERSTAND WHAT THE PARLIAMENTARY AMENDMENTS ARE AND HOW WORK

• Each year, the government has to send a bill to Congress by the end of August with the proposal for the Federal Budget for the following year.
• Upon receiving the project, congressmen have the right to direct part of the budget towards works and investments of their interest. This is done through parliamentary amendments. Deputies and senators use these resources to increase political capital, as they tend to benefit their constituencies.

Parliamentary amendments are divided into:

• Individual amendments: presented by each of the 594 delegates. Each of them can present up to 25 amendments in the amount of approximately R$ 18 million per parliamentarian (amount referring to the 2022 Budget). At least half of that money has to go to Health
• Collective amendments: subdivided into amendments by state benches and amendments by standing committees (of the House, Senate and mixed, of Congress), with no defined value ceiling
• Amendments by the rapporteur-general of the Budget: The amendments under his command, code RP9, are politically divided between parliamentarians aligned with the command of Congress and the government. These amendments began to be used in 2020 and helped broaden Bolsonaro’s support base in Congress, which now has greater control over the Budget. Government allies get bigger shares of these amendments and thus send more resources to their constituencies. In exchange, the government and the top of Congress got a more loyal base in the Legislature.