Government should include another 804,000 families in Auxílio Brasil on the eve of the election

The Jair Bolsonaro government (PL) is preparing to include another 803,800 families in Auxílio Brasil one month before the elections. As a result, the number of beneficiary households should rise to more than 21 million in September.

Expanding the reach of the social program is one of the chief executive’s bets to improve his electoral performance in a context of high inflation and increasing poverty and hunger. Bolsonaro appears in second place in polls, behind former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT).

The president managed to approve in Congress an increase in the minimum benefit to R$ 600 by the end of the year, in addition to having obtained space to take the number of families covered to a record level.

Even so, the temporary Auxílio Brasil of R$ 600 is seen as below what is needed by most of the population. According to a Datafolha survey, 56% of voters say the amount is insufficient.

The new round of inclusion of families was not made explicit by the government when there was a negotiation of additional space in the Budget with the National Congress through the PEC (proposed amendment to the Constitution) “of kindnesses”. The proposal ran over budget and electoral legislation to authorize a hole in the spending ceiling and an increase in social spending amid the presidential race.

At the time, initial projections indicated that the number of people served would reach 19.8 million. Afterwards, Caixa reported that the first wave of inclusions resulted in an audience of 20.2 million families covered by the program – an increase of 2 million in relation to the public served before the PEC, of ​​around 18 million.

The government itself now calculates that the number of beneficiaries will reach 21.6 million by the end of the year. This means, in practice, that the PEC paved the way for the inclusion of 3.5 million families by December.

The forecast was made by the Ministry of Citizenship itself and included, without fanfare, in the explanatory memorandum of the MP (Provisional Measure) that opened the extraordinary credit of R$ 26 billion to fund the expansion of the program in the second half of the year.

“Of this total, 2,049,513 families would be included in the program immediately in the month of August and the other 1,450,000 families will have access during the following months”, says the text.

Maneuver makes concession overcome Auxílio Brasil queue

The strategy allows the government to keep the Auxílio Brasil queue at zero during the electoral campaign, since the number even surpasses the waiting list recognized by the Ministry of Citizenship – it reached a peak of 1.6 million families in the month of July.

The PEC authorized the inclusion of “eligible families on the date of enactment of this Constitutional Amendment”, but the ministry is taking a broader view of the criterion.

The text was enacted on July 14, but those who were qualified after that date are being included because, in the understanding of Citizenship, they were already eligible before and their qualification still depended on the regularization of the registration.

The approval given by Congress was celebrated by Bolsonaro’s campaign – the social program is part of the strategy to try to reduce Lula’s advantage in the preference of voters who receive income transfers.

The PEC made it possible to raise the budget for the program in 2022 to R$ 114.5 billion, a historic record. Of this total, R$ 63.2 billion has already been spent. Therefore, R$ 51.3 billion remains to be used from September to December.

With this amount, the Ministry of Citizenship is able to serve a greater number of families. For this reason, the ministry approved the documentation of the 803,800 extra families, which should enter the program as of September, according to the ministry’s technicians.

Sought, the Ministry did not respond about the forecast of inclusion of new beneficiaries in Auxílio Brasil in September.

Program was created to replace Bolsa Família

The program was created in November 2021, after Bolsonaro extinguished Bolsa Família -associated with PT administrations- in an attempt to leave a mark of his own in the social area.

Since then, allies have tried to expand the number of beneficiaries to leverage Bolsonaro in election polls.

The program’s coverage was approximately 14.5 million in November last year, when the average amount received per family was R$224.

Shortly after, the number of families rose to 18 million, and the average value rose to R$409.50 per month.

In August, after the approval of the PEC, Bolsonaro managed to raise the benefit to R$607.88 per month on average, covering 20.2 million households.

Despite an improvement in the president’s performance, in the wake of the government’s efforts, Lula maintains the lead in the preference of the low-income population.

The PT has 56% of voting intentions in the first round among people who receive Auxílio Brasil or live with someone who is a beneficiary of the program, according to a Datafolha survey. Bolsonaro has 28% among these voters. At the end of May, the president had 20%, against 59% for Lula.

Although the Datafolha poll released on August 18 did not capture significant gains by Bolsonaro in this share of the electorate, a wing of Lula’s allies believes that the current president can still profit from the effect of granting the benefit.

The PT campaign seeks to neutralize Bolsonaro’s growth in this segment, highlighting what is pointed out as the electoral character of the increase in Auxílio Brasil, implemented by the president only until the end of the year.

In this sense, Lula’s allies have insisted that the 2023 Budget proposal was sent providing for only an average payment of R$405, despite the reelection candidate’s promises to maintain the floor of R$600.

On another front, the Bolsonaro campaign admits that the approval of the new package came late. The president’s allies believe that the initiative will be decisive for him to increase his voting intentions, but recognize the difficulty of obtaining electoral dividends before the first round.

Research carried out at the time of the payment of emergency aid, for example, showed that Bolsonaro only reached the peak of popularity in the fourth month of payment of the benefit, which in the first round could reach R$ 1,800 per family.

If this scenario is repeated, the tendency is that the boosted payments of Auxílio Brasil will only take full effect between the first and second rounds of the elections, according to the president’s campaign.