PEC is being made without minister, value or conversation, says government leader in the Senate

For the leader of the government Jair Bolsonaro (PL) in the Senate, Carlos Portinho (PL-RJ), the PEC for the Transition – the main bet of president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) to pay the Bolsa Família next year – is being built in a “fraternity of the PT”, without dialogue or concrete values.

🇧🇷[O texto está sendo elaborado] no minister [da Economia], no proposal, no value and no conversation. There’s no way for us to approve this, I don’t even have a way to respond [qual a posição do governo]🇧🇷 In principle, immediately, impossible [apoiar]”, I told Sheet🇧🇷

The delivery of the PEC ended up postponed amid the lack of political agreement in the Senate, and now the transitional government promises to present the text this Wednesday (16).

The proposal needs to be approved in both Houses this year so that the next administration can maintain the payment of today’s value, but, in the current scenario, the PEC may face resistance from the government base in the Senate because, according to Portinho, it is being built in a run-down way.

“This is being discussed within a confraternity of the PT and the allied parties. This is such a big political mistake. [com a base do governo]”, he says.

“I would have done the opposite, I would have sat down with the government party, with the leader. I would say ‘come here, we’re thinking like this, like this’. This is where they have to do political work. There’s no political work at all. completely wrong.”

The idea of ​​the Transition PEC is to leave the expenses of Auxílio Brasil — which will be called Bolsa Família — again outside the spending ceiling (the fiscal limit that limits the advance of expenses by the variation of inflation) and, thus, manage to maintain the current value of R$ 600 next year.

The change would leave around BRL 175 billion out of the fiscal rule, while the BRL 105 billion currently reserved for the social program would be redistributed to other areas that are at risk of blackout — such as the Farmácia Popular, Minha Casa, Minha Vida, and the Aldir Blanc Law.

Lula’s allies have been insisting that the two candidates have pledged to maintain the value of Auxílio Brasil, and that the current president would also need to break the spending ceiling to pay the benefit starting next year.

Portinho says, however, that Bolsonaro’s bill to guarantee the aid would be much smaller, and that the lack of definition about the direction of the Ministry of Economy scares the financial market. By the calculations of the current government, Auxílio Brasil would cost an extra R$50 billion.

“If you brought here [uma proposta de] R$ 50 billion, R$ 60 billion, we had already resolved the issue”, says Portinho, defending that the amount foreseen by Lula is very high. “The future minister who will have the legitimacy to deal with this.”

For the senator, the unknown about the next Minister of Economy reduces the credibility of the proposal and increases the fear on the part of parliamentarians, who demand a political guarantor.

Last week, the budget’s general rapporteur, Senator Marcelo Castro (MDB-PI), and the transition team signaled their intention to exclude Bolsa Família from the spending ceiling permanently or for at least four years. The Minister of the Civil House, Ciro Nogueira (PP-PI), in turn, defended that this is an exceptional measure only for 2023.

The government leader also claims that the wear and tear not only jeopardize the approval of the PEC, but also the direction of the Senate – where he has been working to defeat the current president, Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD-MG), and assume command of the House in 2023

The president of the PL, Valdemar da Costa Neto, has already stated that the party will have its own candidate in these elections, running against Pacheco, who articulates the support of the next government.

Portinho’s assessment is that Pacheco, in the search for votes from the PT wing, closed himself off to dialogue with the Liberal Party bench, which will be the largest acronym in the Senate in 2023, with 14 seats.

With the promise of opposing the Lula government, the senator does not defend an anti-democratic coup to prevent the PT from taking power — but says the dissatisfaction that motivates the acts in front of military posts in Brazil is legitimate.

“It was a tight difference, a polarized campaign. A candidate who, for a good part of the population, should be in prison, because there was theft. I’m not saying it was candidate ‘a’ or ‘b’ [que roubou]but it was in the government [do PT]🇧🇷 There’s a feeling, and there’s a spasm, an electoral hangover,” he says.

“I don’t want a coup. I, in particular, am completely liberal. And it’s not the first time that they talk about military intervention. In the protests against Dilma [Rousseff] already had it. I think people have the right to ask for this and we have a duty to show them that it is undemocratic”, he adds.