Congress maintains a queue at Auxílio Brasil while it reserves R$16.5 billion for rapporteur amendments

The General Rapporteur for the Budget, Deputy Hugo Leal (PSD-RJ), maintained the forecast of waiting lines at Auxílio Brasil in 2022 and reserved R$ 16.5 billion for the so-called rapporteur amendments, used to send public resources to destinations of interest to government allies.

He also wants to propose a new PEC (proposal to amend the Constitution) to use the resources obtained from the flexibility of court orders in other expenses (today, in part, obligatorily destined to Auxílio Brasil and social security benefits). Under the suggestion, the spending ceiling would be revised every four years.

The report forecasts an amount of R$89 billion for Aid Brazil in 2022 and mentions the service to 17.9 million people. The amount is not enough to serve everyone entitled to the program if the law that creates the social benefit were considered, acknowledge government officials.

For months, the Ministry of Citizenship has been working with the prospect of assisting around 17 million families with Brazil Aid. Despite this, the Chamber of Deputies changed the MP (Provisional Measure) that created the program and expanded its reach, increasing the authorized income ceiling to enter the program from R$200 to R$210 (which expanded the audience) and stipulated that the queue should remain zeroed.

Later, the government articulated in the Senate to change the text and obtained authorization for the program to be reset.

Projections mentioned informally by the government indicate that, strictly speaking, 21.6 million families would be entitled to the program if all poor families were served. This would leave 3.7 million families without the resources even within the allowable poverty ceiling.

When contacted, the Ministry of Citizenship did not inform the official projection of families who would be entitled to the program.

For amendments by the rapporteur, the deputy, who is the general rapporteur of the Budget, allocated R$ 16.5 billion. The largest share (BRL 4.68 billion) goes to primary health care services, while the second largest (BRL 2.6 billion) goes to hospital and outpatient services.

As a result, BRL 2.1 billion are allocated to the national urban development policy aimed at implementing and qualifying roads, BRL 1.86 billion for sustainable development and BRL 1.25 billion for the structuring of the Suas service network ( Single Social Assistance System).

The amount reserved for the rapporteur’s amendments is equivalent to the ceiling stipulated for these transfers in a draft resolution approved in November to regulate the resources.

The amendments became the subject of controversy because of their use as a political bargaining chip. Starting with the 2020 Budget, the top of Congress began to put into practice a maneuver to take advantage of its power in the negotiations – taking advantage of the political weakness of the Bolsonaro government, which was forced to give up part of the execution of this budget.

The rapporteur suggested in the text a PEC that changes the Union’s spending ceiling. The idea is to allow the rule to be redefined every four years, through a complementary law published in the first year of the presidential term.

The intention is also to allow that the fiscal margin relative to the individual limits of bodies that are outside the scope of the Executive can be used to benefit this power.

In addition, the deputy suggests untying the fiscal margin opened by the constitutional amendments that deal with precatories to “meet the institutional and Brazilian society needs”.

The linking of expenses with the Auxílio Brasil program was the main controversy during the processing of the PEC dos Precatórios. The senators approved the proposal, which opened up a space of R$106 billion in the Budget, but included items that linked spending, so as not to give the government a free hand to spend in an election year.

Senators have included items to link spending on social assistance as well as social security spending.

Initially, the final report was scheduled to be read and voted on this Monday morning (20), but it was postponed due to lack of agreement.

The president of the Mixed Budget Commission, senator Rose de Freitas (MDB-ES), affirms that there are still points to be discussed and that the forecast is that the negotiations will continue until the eve of the meeting scheduled to vote on the report, on Tuesday. fair (21).

Rose de Freitas stated that there were 11 points of divergence. However, after meeting with technicians from the Ministry of Economy and with sectorial budget teams, this number dropped to four items, but she did not indicate which they would be. The senator said that “surely” resources can be withdrawn from the electoral fund, foreseen at R$ 5.1 billion in Leal’s report.

Senator Marcelo Castro (MDB-PI) stated that his party’s bench in the Senate defends an amount between R$4 billion and R$5 billion, an “intermediary” between what had been proposed in the government’s budget proposal — R$ 2.1 billion — and the R$ 5.7 billion that came into effect after the Congress’s overturning of the veto.

Senator Wellington Fagundes (PL-MT), sectorial budget rapporteur, stated that the Ministry of Education’s budget should be recomposed of around R$ 3.5 billion, despite the ministry’s demand for around R$ 4.5 billion .

The congressman also reinforced that there is an attempt to reallocate R$ 400 million from the electoral fund for spending on education, within the scope of the National Fund for the Development of Education, for the completion of unfinished works in kindergartens and schools.