Moro’s Guru Pastore says emergency aid has been paid to more people than it should have

First name presented by Sergio Moro as an assistant in the macroeconomic area of ​​his possible candidacy for the Presidency of the Republic in 2022, the former president of the Central Bank Affonso Celso Pastore stated this Thursday (18th) that the emergency aid of R$ 600 was paid to many more people than it should have, showing itself to be one of the main examples of mistakes made by the Jair Bolsonaro administration in the fiscal area.

In a public hearing in the Chamber of Deputies, in which he participated virtually, Pastore also claimed to have restrictions on the spending ceiling, criticized the president of the Chamber, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), and classified the attempt to use part of the budget slack with the approval of the PEC dos Precatório of “poor political patronage”.

“I don’t need to go very far to say that there was a huge waste in the use of resources,” said the economist at the hearing, whose theme was the discussion on the Brazilian public debt.

“In a country that is evaluated by an economist who is the creator of Bolsa Família, called Ricardo Paes de Barros, who estimates absolute poverty in the country, looking from above, at something like 25 million inhabitants, the R$600 was given. to 66 million people. I mean, there were people who didn’t have to pay,” said Pastore in his presentation.

He compared spending to GDP in other developed countries during the Covid crisis, arguing that this is an example of “bad spending, of an error in sizing up what the government could spend.”

Emergency aid began in April 2020 as a way to mitigate the economic impacts caused by the new coronavirus pandemic.

Its initial value was R$600, reduced in the second half of that year to R$300. The program was suspended in December and resumed in April of this year, with values ​​ranging from R$150 to R$375.

In 2020, emergency aid reached more than 68 million people. With the change of rules for 2021, which only allowed the receipt of one person per family, the number has dropped to almost half.

​In his speech of affiliation to Podemos, on the 10th, when he outlined part of his proposals for a possible candidacy, Moro highlighted the creation of a “task force” to eradicate poverty, claiming that it is possible to achieve this goal without a hole in the ceiling expense or other fiscal irresponsibility.

“One of the priorities of our project will be to eradicate poverty, to put an end to misery once and for all.
it should have been done years ago. For that, we need more than cash transfer programs like Bolsa Família or Auxílio Brasil. We need to identify what each person needs to get out of poverty,” said the former judge.

Without detailing how he intends to achieve this goal, he only stated that “even when you want something good, with this increase in Auxílio Brasil or Bolsa Família (…) something bad comes with it, like defaulting on debts, a hole in the spending ceiling and increasing resources for other things that are not priorities.”

“It is not, and it is not necessary to destroy the spending ceiling or fiscal responsibility to do so. We can eradicate poverty and that is the challenge of our generation”, added Moro, in a speech interpreted as an attempt to send a message to the base election of former president Lula (PT).

After making his remarks about emergency relief, Pastore in this fifth made direct criticisms of Arthur Lira, one of Moro’s main opponents in the political world.

“The same way [gasto desnecessári o] which is being done now, there is an amendment by the rapporteur who is sending money to the deputy whose father is the mayor of Alagoas [o pai de Lira é prefeito de Barra de São Miguel]. Sorry to be hard. But this is a citizen who is seeing this type of allocation of resources and who is revolting,” said the economist.

Lira led in Congress, with the support of Bolsonaro, an offensive to change points of legislation in response to the Lava Jato, an operation that had in Moro as its main public figure.

Moro, who joined Podemos with the intention of running for President in 2022, announced Pastore’s name in an interview with TV Globo’s Conversa com Bial, shown at dawn on Wednesday (17).

He said that the former president of the Central Bank, under João Batista Figueiredo, the last general president, is part of a group he gathered to discuss the economic direction of Brazil. “He is one of the best names in the country,” he stated.

At the public hearing on Thursday, which former BNDES president André Lara Resende also attended, Pastore also stated that he had restrictions on the spending ceiling.

“I don’t think this is the best regime the country could have. It doesn’t have to be rigid of that nature, it has to obey criteria of how to spend, how to return, etc.”

Also in his speech on the affiliation to Podemos, Moro made quick mentions of the spending ceiling, always in the sense that it is possible to eradicate poverty without breaking it. At no time, the former judge criticized the model.

Pastore also attacked this Thursday the PEC dos Precatórios, a priority of the Jair Bolsonaro government, for whom Moro was Minister of Justice for almost 16 months.

“I have nothing against you bursting a spending ceiling to provide emergency aid as was done now, between R$30 and R$40 billion. But I have a lot against you defaulting on court orders and opening R$16, 6 billion in secret amendments, plus the party fund. This is no way of doing fiscal policy. This is bad political patronage, you deputies, I’m sorry.”

The Precatório PEC, already approved by the Chamber and under analysis by the Senate, circumvents the spending ceiling and allows the government to spend an additional R$ 91.6 billion in 2022 without the need to cut other expenses — which increases the deficit in public accounts and the country’s indebtedness.

Brazil has been in the red since 2014, its debt exceeds R$5.4 trillion and interest costs are paid by society as a whole.

In addition to making room for the payment of Auxílio Brasil, which succeeds Bolsa Família, the proposal should make room for an increase in budget amendments controlled by the top of Congress, in addition to an eventual increase in the electoral fund for parties and candidates in the 2022 contest.

In the Chamber, Lira controls the distribution and execution of the so-called rapporteur amendments, whose division meets strictly political criteria. This type of amendment had its execution suspended by the Federal Supreme Court, but Congress is articulated to try to reverse the decision.

Congress should also try to raise the budget for the electoral fund, from R$ 2.1 billion. At the beginning of the year, there was already an attempt to triple this amount.

Judge of Lava Jato, Moro left the magistracy to assume the Ministry of Justice of the Bolsonaro government, with whom he fell out — this motivated his resignation in April of last year.

This year, Moro suffered a severe defeat in the STF (Supreme Federal Court), which considered him partial in the actions in which he served as federal judge against former president Lula. As a result, actions in the triplex cases in Guarujá, the Atibaia site and the Lula Institute were annulled.

In the final part of this Thursday’s hearing, Pastore said he was still against the “minimum state”.

“I think the State has to make investments, the State has to take care of society’s well-being. Now, the State also has to be an issuer of insurance against complex situations, some of which are not predictable. Economic cycles exist, and when we enter an economic cycle, the role of the state as an insurance generator is to make countercyclical policies.”

At this point, he defended income distribution when there is a situation of absolute poverty.

“You don’t give the money away for free. You make this mother take the child to school, to daycare, so that she can [a mãe] she can be a laundress or a cleaning woman in a house, trying to make her son have a better ability to rise in society than she does,” he said, adding: “Brazil has no fiscal policy, Brazil spends according to pressure groups.”