Economy Minister Paulo Guedes criticized left-wing policies this Tuesday (27), but said that “the right is also damned” and likes privileges within the Budget.
“The right is also damned, likes a little budget to pull over there and pull favors and privileges for themselves”, said Guedes in participation in the Flow podcast.
The minister did not detail what kind of favors or privileges he was referring to.
In the Jair Bolsonaro (PL) government, Congress gained power over the Budget through the so-called rapporteur’s amendments, used as a bargaining chip in political negotiations in the National Congress. This type of amendment, which totals BRL 16.5 billion this year and will reach BRL 19.4 billion in 2023, usually favors allies of the Planalto Palace and the summit of Congress.
The use of these resources came into the crosshairs of public authorities on suspicion of embezzlement. In one of the cases, amendments by the rapporteur were directed towards the purchase of robotics kits from a company allied to the mayor, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), as shown by the Sheet.
Behind the scenes of the economic team and among specialists, the rapporteur’s amendments are seen as a mechanism that further stiffens the Budget, favoring lower quality expenditures. In the proposal for 2023, social actions such as Farmácia Popular and Mais Médicos had cuts in their funds to make room for the reserve for these amendments.
Guedes made the statement in the context in which he criticized leftist policies. According to the minister, the left attracts Brazilian voters “because it promises heaven, but delivers hell.”
About two weeks ago, he had already used a similar figure of speech when associating former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) with the “devil”.
“I even said the following to a young man I was helping in politics before helping President Bolsonaro. the left pretends to have it — because in fact when they are in power, [pratica] diversion of resources, corruption, economic growth ends — and at the same time we are going to use market economy,” Guedes said on Tuesday.
Subsequently, the minister began to list what “are also the defects of the right”, mentioning the favors and privileges for politicians of this ideological spectrum.
Guedes also said that it is necessary to have tolerance for different political views, but accused the left of being intolerant of conservatives and asked for “a little patience” with the current government.
“A country that has had 30 years in a row of the left in charge, for God’s sake, can it be tolerant? Have a little patience with a government that in four years had to face two and a half years of Covid. fair to us?” he asked.
When starting his participation in the podcast, Guedes – dressed in a shirt and vest, without a jacket or tie – said that he was there “as a citizen”, not as a minister. “It’s the Brazilian Paulo Guedes, not the minister. I’m out of work. I’m calm, I can say a lot of things, even so I can’t say much”, he said.
Despite this, he listed at different times data considered positive by the government, such as the growth of the economy and the deceleration of inflation.
The minister also said again that the spending ceiling, a fiscal rule that limits the growth of expenses to the variation of inflation, was “poorly constructed”. Approved in the Michel Temer government (MDB), the ceiling must be modified independently of the president elected in October.
“Imagine a house with a roof without a wall. In other words, the roof will fall on your head. It looks like Vinicius de Moraes, ‘it was a very funny house, there was no roof, there was nothing'”, said the minister.
He cited times when the Bolsonaro government had to “pierce” the ceiling to increase spending, especially in the face of the effects of Covid-19, but stressed that the increase in expenses was temporary.
“Do you know what happened to our spending? It went from 19% of GDP to 26.5%, to help the Brazilian population. The following year, 18.7%. Everything came back. So we pierced the ceiling like Santa Claus, went down there to deliver gifts to everyone and went up again”, he said.
“We made a small fireplace to deliver gifts to everyone. Pierce the ceiling? Yes, but the government is the first to go out spending less than when it arrived.”
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