The Chamber of Deputies approved this Tuesday (21) the budget bill with a forecast of R$ 1.74 billion to increase the number of police officers in 2022, election year, after the general rapporteur, Deputy Hugo Leal ( PSD-RJ), withdraw from its decision not to provide for salary readjustments to civil servants.
The measure, which is yet another defeat for Paulo Guedes, comes a day after the economy minister went on a 19-day vacation and has already opened a crisis in the civil servants’ elite — Revenue auditors started a stampede from office in protest.
The text also foresees R$4.9 billion for the fund for financing electoral campaigns for next year. This value is lower than what could be established (BRL 5.7 billion), but it is a record — it is almost BRL 3 billion more than what had been proposed by the government and which represented the value of the last general elections (2018) , corrected for inflation.
The controversial amendments by the rapporteur, money whose distribution is used as a political exchange currency and controlled, in practice, by the top of Congress, were kept at R$ 16.5 billion.
At the CMO (Joint Budget Commission), the text was approved in a symbolic vote. In the Chamber, the text was approved by 358 to 97. It still needs to go through the Senate before proceeding to the sanction of President Jair Bolsonaro (PL).
The vote in the Budget committee was marked by pressure from public security and health servers to get a salary increase. In addition, congressmen also articulated to minimize the expected reduction in the funding fund for electoral campaigns.
At the CMO, the vote on the opinion was scheduled for this Monday (20). However, differences over the numbers presented by the general rapporteur caused the meeting to be postponed.
The complementing vote of Hugo Leal presented on Tuesday foresees R$ 1.736 billion to meet projects for restructuring and/or increasing the remuneration of positions, functions and careers in the Executive — and, according to parliamentarians who participated in the negotiation, would be destined to cops.
Police officers are one of the main pillars of President Jair Bolsonaro’s base. Representatives of the category were in the plenary during the CMO session, including members who have not yet taken office.
The readjustment for the police officers was included in the Budget despite Guedes’ criticism — due to the minister’s vacation, the meetings of parliamentarians with the Ministry of Economy in the final stretch of discussions were held with the team’s secretaries.
The argument of the Ministry of Economy is that the incumbent has already fulfilled his duty by delivering the Budget and that now the choices must be made by the political class, including facing the burden of withdrawing resources from certain areas to allocate to others.
Guedes said that he tried to argue in the government against the idea of readjustment for fear of pressure from other categories, but ended up giving in and signing an official letter to Congress calling for the resources to be reserved in 2022. categories is a disgrace to contemporaries and that widespread increases would be a disgrace to future generations.
The readjustment only for police officers should generate dissatisfaction from other categories. Fábio Faiad, president of Sinal (National Union of Central Bank Employees), says that the measure would bring an unfair asymmetry because the starting salaries of federal police officers would be higher than the values at the end of their careers for BC employees.
“This could provoke not only animosity within the civil service, but also a generalized departure of BC servants when the opening of public service exams for federal police officers is opened,” says Faiad.
Even members of the Pocket Parliament questioned the salary adjustment for police officers.
“I could not fail to register my position of considering all the circumstances we are living in, in particular the issue of the pandemic,” said Deputy Caroline de Toni (PSL-SC). “I believe that is not the time now for us to make a salary replacement for the civil service because there are several categories, including the health area, that seek this reward and have not been met”
In addition to the police, health agents were also contemplated by the General Rapporteur for the Budget, who allocated R$ 800 million to readjust the salary floor of these professionals.
Congress promoted an approximate cut of R$ 16 billion in Social Security, subsidies and BPC (Continued Cash Benefit) to expand other expenses –such as the rapporteur’s amendments–, according to preliminary calculations by the IFI (Independent Fiscal Institution, body of the Senate which monitors public accounts).
The IFI will go deeper into the numbers, but it had already carried out projections that pointed to an overestimation of approximately R$36 billion in a set of expenditures like these. Congress, also seeing fat in the estimates, made the cut.
Felipe Salto, executive director of the IFI, says that the comparison of the figures previously projected by him and his team and the data presented by the rapporteur show that there may still be a fatness even with the cut – which indicates that there would be no risk for payments benefits and pensions.
Rapporteur Amendments
Leal’s first report was released at dawn on Monday without providing for salary increases for civil servants, with an estimate of R$ 5.1 billion for the fund to finance electoral campaigns and with R$ 16.5 billion in rapporteur amendments.
The value corresponds to the maximum ceiling established by a draft resolution approved by Congress, which limited the maximum to the sum of individual tax amendments.
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 maintenance of the rapporteur’s amendments provoked the reaction of opposition lawmakers, who voted against the favorable opinion of the amendments admissibility committee.
“We cannot forget the way in which these rapporteur’s amendments were born. It was a big deal to guarantee the approval of unpopular projects”, stated deputy Glauber Braga (PSOL-RJ).
The rapporteur included in his report a forecast of federal investments of BRL 44 billion for the next year, which is greater than the amount allocated in the opinion of senator Márcio Bittar (PSL-AC), rapporteur of the 2021 bill, of BRL 37, 65 billion (R$ 41.5 billion, in today’s values).
Last week, Congress overturned President Jair Bolsonaro’s veto on the electoral fund of up to R$ 5.7 billion. The articulation for the overthrow had the support of the opposition and the governing base, including the PL, the new party of the head of the Executive.
On Tuesday, in agreement with lawmakers, Hugo Leal had initially reduced the fund for financing electoral campaigns from R$ 5.1 billion foreseen in the previous opinion to R$ 4.7 billion. However, after pressure from the center, it transferred R$ 200 million in commission amendments to the fund, bringing the total to R$ 4.9 billion.
Individual amendments totaled R$ 10.9 billion, while those for benches totaled R$ 5.9 billion.
The approved text slightly increases the minimum wage forecast for 2022, from R$1,169 to R$1,210. Even so, this will be the third year in a row without a real readjustment.
Until 2019, the minimum wage rule provided for correction for the previous year’s inflation (INPC) plus the real increase in GDP from two years earlier (if the latter is positive) – which, for most of the period, provided real adjustments to the workers. The rule was instituted in 2011, in the government of Dilma Rousseff (PT).
The adjustment bill for 2022 considered a projection for the minimum wage made by the Ministry of Economy in November. In the substitute, however, Leal estimates an INPC of 10.18% in 2021 — which would take the minimum to a higher value, of R$ 1,211.98.
The text also maintains the forecast of waiting lines at Auxílio Brasil. The estimated budget is 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.
The rapporteur suggested a PEC (proposed amendment to the Constitution) 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.
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