Deputies want to make permanent minimum value of R$ 400 in Auxílio Brasil

Under pressure from the opposition to increase the value of Auxílio Brasil, deputies allied to the Jair Bolsonaro government (PL) want to make the R$400 minimum paid to families benefiting from the program permanent.

Today, the benefit amount is divided into two parts, a permanent one, whose average ticket was R$224 in November last year, and a temporary one, equivalent to the amount needed to reach the R$400 promised by Bolsonaro.

The temporary portion, called the extraordinary benefit, is valid only until December 2022. Without further changes, families would have a loss of income from January 2023.

The design was made that way because the government needed a new permanent source of revenue to fund a significant increase in the value of the program, as required by the LRF (Law of Fiscal Responsibility). This source would be the taxation of profits and dividends, included in the proposal for the reform of the Income Tax, but the text ended up stalling in the Senate.

Without the source of compensation, Bolsonaro edited in December last year an MP (provisional measure) creating the extraordinary benefit until the end of 2022 – enough to get through the election year without violating the LRF.

The MP is due to be voted on this Wednesday (27) by the Chamber and its rapporteur is Deputy João Roma (PL-BA), former Minister of Citizenship of Bolsonaro and pre-candidate for the government of Bahia. According to parliamentarians, there is a negotiation for Deputy Hugo Motta (Republicans-PB) to present an amendment to make the benefit permanent.

Since the enactment of the measure, however, the government obtained in Congress the approval of the PEC (proposed amendment to the Constitution) of the Precatórios, which postponed the payment of federal judicial debts and relaxed the spending ceiling, the government’s fiscal anchor that limits the expenditure growth to the variation of inflation.

One of the provisions of the constitutional amendment enacted from the PEC authorizes the government to regulate, in 2022, the conditions, access rules and other requirements of the social program without the need to meet the legal limits for increased expenses —in practice, removing the LRF .

A legal opinion issued by the PGFN (Attorney General of the National Treasury), issued on December 28, indicates that this provision authorizes the government to make the amount of R$400 permanent without the need for a source of compensation.

The assessment is that the LRF already authorizes the creation of temporary expenses without the need for a permanent source of income. Therefore, according to a government source, the constitutional provision only makes sense if the interpretation is that it opens the way to expenses that have repercussions in other years, as long as they are aimed at fighting poverty.

In the economic team, the assessment is that, having a legal and legal basis, the benefit of R$ 400 already has a guaranteed space within the spending ceiling and is also already accounted for in the estimated fiscal targets for this and next year. That is, there is no budget constraint on the proposal.

Furthermore, politically, it is very unlikely that any government will reduce the value of the current R$400.

Despite these articulations, the issue is controversial, and within the government itself there is no consensus. There are technicians who make a more restrictive interpretation of the rule, since it mentions the “increase in expenses in the referred year”, that is, the exemption would be valid only for this year.

Even technicians from the TCU (Union Court of Auditors) understand, in preliminary analyses, that the requirements of the LRF should be observed for the period from 2023 onwards.

Since Tuesday (26), members of the government and allies in Congress have been working to stop the opposition’s attempt to raise the minimum amount of Auxílio Brasil.

The justification of government allies is that any R$ 1 more in value would make it impossible for the president to sanction the law. Otherwise, his candidacy for the Plateau would be at risk, since the electoral law prohibits the expansion of this type of benefit in the year of the election.

A possible veto of the law, to avoid legal conflict, would end up returning the families to the previous reality, with an average payment of around R$ 224.41. In practice, it would mean a cut in the benefit of the most vulnerable population at a time when the rise in food prices is already putting pressure on the pockets of these families.

The conversion of the extraordinary benefit into a permanent one, however, would not face any type of restriction under the electoral law, according to government technicians.

See the Auxílio Brasil payment schedule in 2022

Auxílio Brasil was created to be the social brand of the Bolsonaro government, succeeding Bolsa Família, associated with PT administrations. On different occasions, the president promised the payment of a minimum benefit of R$ 400 and the end of the program’s waiting list, which reached more than 1 million families.

This Wednesday, the president of the Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco (PSD-MG), said that the senators must keep the value of R$ 400 of the program when the MP is forwarded to the House.

“In relation to the value, I imagine that there is already a tendency to maintain the value that was agreed, because, on our part, in the Federal Senate, we have a great commitment to fiscal responsibility. It is also very important to provide assistance to people who This is what aid is for, but it is also very important to have fiscal responsibility because we live in a time of great instability, many difficulties”, said the Minas Gerais senator.

The president of the Senate also stated that he will wait for the result of the vote in the Chamber, but that he will guide the proposal, when it reaches the House that he presides, in such a way that the provisional measure is voted on before it loses its validity.