Social blackout in 2023 Budget proposal challenges election winner

The 2023 Budget proposal threatens to create a blackout in social policies in the country and poses a significant challenge to the president-elect and the National Congress, who will need to work together to restore these expenditures by the end of December this year.

The deadline is short to avoid that, in January, 20.6 million families have a cut of R$ 200 in the value of Auxílio Brasil, 8,4 thousand social assistance centers reduce their attendance and 125 thousand works of popular houses are interrupted. —another 15,000 have already been postponed.

The service to 21 million families through the Popular Pharmacy, which distributes medicines free of charge or subsidized, is also threatened and could stop from May if nothing is done.

The programs mentioned are just a few examples. The budget piece sent by the Jair Bolsonaro government (PL) on August 31 brought significant cuts in several social actions in health, housing and social assistance to meet the spending ceiling (a rule that limits federal expenses).

While the future of these public policies remains uncertain, parliamentarians have a reserve of R$ 19.4 billion for the rapporteur’s amendments — resources used as a bargaining chip in political negotiations, with little transparency.

Congressmen could even use the rapporteur’s amendments to contemplate the actions that were cut, but the recent history of these amendments shows a certain preference for the acquisition of tractors, equipment, financing of works and health care in their electoral strongholds.

The situation of the 2023 Budget has aroused criticism from experts and has been exploited by Bolsonaro’s opponents in the election campaign.

Economists linked to the PT campaign speak of “social abyss” or “sudden death” of programs at the turn of the year. Government members try to counter the attacks with the promise of reformulating the Budget after the elections and claim that the current version is “a fiction”.

The resolution of the impasse in the social programs will demand from the president-elect and from the Congress an agile negotiation to make the spending ceiling more flexible and redesign the Budget.

This is what, for example, the functioning of the Cras (Social Assistance Reference Center) and Creas (Specialized Social Assistance Reference Center) units depends on, which work in the management of the Single Registry of social benefits.

It is a network with wide capillarity: according to the Sua Census (Single Social Assistance System), Brazil had 8,400 centers spread across 99% of Brazilian municipalities in 2020.

as showed the Sheetthe resources for maintaining this network, which is the gateway to social benefits such as Auxílio Brasil, had a 95% cut in federal funds for 2023.

The president of Congemas (National Collegiate of Municipal Social Assistance Managers), Elias Oliveira, says that assistance actions are financed jointly by the Union, states and municipalities. As federal transfers have been falling year after year, this forces city halls to invest greater amounts or reduce operations — harming home visits or sheltering actions for young people and women in vulnerable situations.

“It’s no use for this mother, for this family to receive R$ 600 [do Auxílio Brasil] if you don’t have a backup, [não puder] send the child to a service of coexistence and strengthening of bonds, if I cannot offer her a qualification course”, says Oliveira.

“The lack of resources breaks this whole network. The R$ 600 even allows her to buy food, or at least part of it, but she doesn’t have the protection network that is complementary.”

In 2015, according to Congemas, the federal budget to help finance the Cras/Creas was R$ 3.4 billion, in values ​​at the time. In 2022, the figure dropped to R$ 1.1 billion. For 2023, the initial reserve is a mere BRL 48.3 million.

“For the very poor family, this network is the first entry they have for the State to understand what their needs are. From there, other health, education, day care actions can be forwarded, everything that a very vulnerable family needs”, explains the economist Sergio Firpo, professor at Insper.

“When you take out the budget forecast, it’s as if you were saying to these very poor families: ‘You can do it there'”, he adds.

In the Casa Verde e Amarela housing program, a cut of 95% also led the MDR (Ministry of Regional Development) to freeze 15,000 works that would be resumed later this year. Another 125,000 will be suspended as of January if there is no recomposition of the Budget.

Alessandra Santos, representative of Movimento Sem Terra Leste 1, has been waiting for the development of the Jerônimo Alves residential project for eight years, named after her father, one of those who founded the organization 35 years ago.

The project is part of a project of three residential units in the east side of São Paulo, with capacity to receive 700 families. The work was contracted in 2016, but until today it has not come to fruition due to lack of money.

“This delay is a very big problem. Many families live in favor, in their father’s or aunt’s house, others pay rent, and with the pandemic many people ended up being homeless, even”, says Santos, who expected to see the residential contemplated in the next year.

“We have families that had to occupy spaces on the street because they lost their income. People had to leave São Paulo, they had to go to other cities to try to make a living because they couldn’t survive here. Almost 100 families left the project because of these eight years “, it says.

In health, the situation is also delicate. Bolsonaro sent the budget proposal with a forecast of a 42% cut in the discretionary funds of the Ministry of Health. This type of resource is used to buy materials, equipment and assist in the provision of services to the population.

The Popular Pharmacy suffered an even greater reduction, of 59%. Created in 2004, the program distributes basic medicines free of charge or at a discount of up to 90% for hypertension, diabetes, asthma, among other diseases, through private pharmacies.

The initiative is seen as central by SUS (Unified Health System) managers for the control of prevalent diseases. But the budget fell from R$ 2.48 billion this year to R$ 1 billion in 2023. Reducing deliveries can increase the demand for hospital care and hospitalizations.

The budget proposal also threatens the maintenance of Mais Médicos and the consolidation of the program created to succeed it, Doctors for Brazil. The amount set aside for these training and decentralization programs for health professionals may fall from R$2.96 billion this year to R$1.46 billion in 2023.

UFRJ (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) professor Ligia Bahia, a specialist in public health, points out that Mais Médicos currently supports 18,240 vacancies in 4,058 municipalities across the country, in addition to 34 special indigenous health districts. “With the cut of half the budget, will there be a reduction of doctors for these more distant locations or will there be complementation of resources?”, she asks.

Bolsonaro also proposed reducing 58% of the DataSUS (Department of Informatics of the Unified Health System) budget in 2023, which could increase the risks of new leaks of sensitive data from the population.

Assistants to Minister Marcelo Queiroga say that the funds reserved for Health in 2023 are enough to guarantee the operation of the main actions for just four months. These interlocutors also claim that they were taken by surprise by the size of the cuts and that, therefore, they have not yet made a precise diagnosis of which actions can be interrupted or reduced in the next year.

The expectation of the portfolio is that part of the Budget will be recomposed with funds from the rapporteur’s amendments. This exit, however, requires negotiation with the National Congress. Pressured by the electoral dispute, Bolsonaro says he will rebuild the health budget, but has not yet pointed out a concrete solution.