Increasing the number of members of parliament could cost almost R$ 4 billion per legislature.

Brazilian congressmen and senators are working to confirm the AtlasIntel survey from last February, which showed that 82% of the population does not trust the National Congress.

In a swift vote on the bill authored by Dani Cunha, Eduardo Cunha's daughter, the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate approved the creation of 18 new seats for representatives. With this, the Federal Chamber will increase from the current 513 to 531 representatives.

With this decision, the sky became the limit. With each demographic census that necessitates the redistribution of seats for representatives by state, Congress will simply increase the number of mandates so that no state reduces the number of representatives.

Congress, however, left untouched the enormous distortions in popular representation that originated during the dictatorship, resulting in some states that should have one or at most two representatives electing eight.

Former Porto Alegre mayor Raul Pont points out that the combined population of the 10 smallest states [RO, AP, AC, TO, RO, SE, MS, AL, PI and RN] totals 21 million people [IBGE/2024] and elects 80 federal deputies, while "the state of São Paulo, with almost 46 million inhabitants, therefore more than double the population, elects only 70 federal deputies".

“This is more than distortion, it is a fraud against the principle of equal voting rights for citizens, which is also enshrined in the Constitution,” Pont argues.

The approved bill "establishes that the creation and maintenance of new mandates cannot increase the total expenses of the Chamber between 2027 and 2030."

The bill's rapporteur in the Senate, the jokester Senator Marcelo Castro (MDB-PI), swears that with the increase in the number of mandates "there will be no budgetary impact of a single cent."

It doesn't take much effort to debunk this fallacy. Immediately, millions will be needed in construction and investment to create 18 offices, expand the number of committee rooms, adapt the Chamber's plenary hall, etc.

Furthermore, the annual cost to the Brazilian people for the 18 new parliamentarians will be almost R$ 1 billion, considering R$ 50 million in mandatory amendments for each deputy, their salaries of R$ 46, office allowances, R$ 133 per month for paying teams of between 15 and 25 employees, plus housing allowance and other resources.

Therefore, every four years of the legislature, the 18 new mandates for deputies will consume R$ 3,85 billion of the taxes collected.

Aside from the direct expenses in the Federal Chamber's budget paid for with taxpayer money, the increase in the number of federal deputies will produce a cascading effect of increasing the number of deputies in state legislatures, since the Constitution establishes such a calculation link.