Minister Rosa Weber, of the STF (Supreme Federal Court), determined this Friday (5) the suspension of parliamentary amendments that are paid to deputies and senators and controlled by the general rapporteur of the budget law that passes through Congress.
These amendments have been handled by government officials with the support of the Planalto Palace on the eve of important votes for the Executive.
Before the approval of the PEC dos Precatórios, for example, R$ 1 billion was released in amendments of this nature. This proposal allows for the expansion of public spending and makes possible the expansion of the AuxÃlio Brasil promised by President Jair Bolsonaro in an election year.
The decision was taken in a lawsuit filed in June by PSOL. The minister stated that the suspension is necessary because these resources controlled by the rapporteur create “a privileged group of parliamentarians that will be able to allocate a greater volume of resources to their electoral bases.”
The magistrate also said that there is a lack of transparency in the destination of these amendments.
“There is no way to know who are, in fact, the federal deputies and senators of the components of this unknown group, since the budget schedule used for this purpose only identifies the figure of the general rapporteur”, he said.
The decision will be analyzed by the STF as a whole next week. The judgment will be virtual and the ministers will have the 9th and 10th to raise their votes in the system.
The suspension of these amendments, if maintained by the court, should increase the government’s difficulties to settle its agendas in Parliament.
The magistrate ruled that the amendments relating to this year’s fiscal year must be “completely and immediately suspended” until the Supreme Court gives a final word on the matter.
as showed the sheet this Thursday (4), nearly R$ 1 billion were invested in rapporteur amendments between October 28 and November 3, when the PEC was voted. The commitment is the first stage of the process for the money to reach the electoral bases.
The basic text was approved in the first round by 312 to 144. It is expected that the highlights and the second round will be appreciated on Tuesday (9).
Last week, the government failed to align the base of the Chamber, presided over by Arthur Lira (PP-AL), to get the 308 votes necessary to approve the proposal. It was necessary to expand the articulation with allied parties and also with deputies with independent and even opposition acronyms.
The amount of R$ 1 billion, for example, is equivalent to what was committed throughout the month of September as a rapporteur’s amendment.
The amendments released on the eve of the PEC vote of the Precatórios mainly serve works (especially related to roads and paving), projects in agribusiness and the health area.
To justify the decision, Rosa Weber cited a report by the TCU (Court of Accounts of the Union) on the resources controlled by the rapporteur of the budget law and stated that “the discovery that a significant portion of the Federal Government budget is being offered to a group of parliamentarians, through arbitrary distribution established between political coalitions”.
The opinion of the court of auditors mentioned states that there was an increase compared to last year of 523% in relation to the rapporteur’s amendments presented and 379% in the consigned appropriations.
“While in the 2017-2019 triennium, the General Rapporteur’s amendments totaled BRL 165.82 billion, which represented, on average, 70.3% of the total amendments presented, in 2020, those amendments totaled BRL 151.33 billion “, stated the TCU.
The minister also stated that there is a “substantial difference” in the execution of the other amendments in relation to those of the rapporteur.
“While the execution of individual and bench amendments allows the verification of the authorship of expenses and equity in the distribution of resources, the regulations pertaining to the rapporteur’s amendments distance themselves from these republican ideals, making the identification of requesting parliamentarians and final recipients inscrutable” , he stated.
Rosa Weber stated that the allocation of resources takes place “through informal agreements”.
She also said that the funds linked to the rapporteur’s amendments are hidden in a “budget line ashamed of itself, created with the purpose of hiding behind the authority of the figure of the general rapporteur of the budget an unknown collective of parliamentarians”.
These resources destined to congressmen, according to the magistrate, violate the republican principle and the transparency regime in the use of public resources.
“In short, there is a duplicity of regimes for the execution of parliamentary amendments: the transparent regime specific to individual and bench amendments and the anonymous system for the execution of expenses resulting from the rapporteur’s amendments”.
According to the minister, these amendments were instituted in 2006 with the purpose of “giving the general rapporteur of the budget bill the necessary powers to organize the set of changes introduced in the initial legislative proposal”.
In 2020, they gained a new format. “Until fiscal 2019, expenses arising from the rapporteur’s amendments did not have their own budget classification indicator,” he said.
According to her, this means that, once the budget bill is approved, “it is no longer possible to distinguish whether the expenses foreseen therein resulted from the original bill or from the rapporteur’s amendment”.
The minister claims that the rapporteur’s amendments have “expressive value of public resources” that are carried out without observing “any parameters of equity or efficiency standards in the election of bodies and entities that benefit from the allocated resources”.
With this argument, the magistrate claims that it is up to the STF to overturn the execution of these funds because they violate the constitutional principles of “legality, impersonality, morality, publicity and efficiency”.
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