Amended by the Chamber of Deputies, the Transition Amendment will have to return to the Senate.

Reuters - The Chamber of Deputies approved on Tuesday, in the first round, the main text of the so-called Transition Amendment, which increases the spending ceiling by 145 billion reais for the payment of Bolsa Família benefits in the amount of 600 reais, but the matter will have to return to the Senate, since the deputies reduced the term of validity of the measure from two years to just one and included new rules on parliamentary amendments.

The main text of the Proposed Amendment to the Constitution was approved by 331 votes to 168. The deputies still need to debate the amendments that could alter the text, and then they will need to vote on the measure in a second round before returning it to the Senate.

The proposed constitutional amendment, which required 308 favorable votes from the Chamber of Deputies, did not find the same ease of passage in the Chamber as it did in the Senate, where it was approved comfortably earlier in the month.

Negotiations surrounding the proposed constitutional amendment in the Chamber of Deputies, already troubled amidst the formation of the new government, suffered further turbulence with the Supreme Federal Court's (STF) ruling on the so-called "secret budget." On Monday, the court overturned the mechanism for directing resources under the heading of the general rapporteur's amendments to the Budget, which was criticized by many for being a form of political bargaining chip.

The parliamentarians then decided, based on a political agreement, that the more than 19 billion reais reserved for the instrument declared unconstitutional will be divided between mandatory individual parliamentary amendments and resources for actions of the Federal Executive, to be determined by amendments presented by the general rapporteur of the Budget. In practice, this last change circumvents the Supreme Court's decision, leaving the power to decide on the allocation of a portion of the Budget in the hands of the rapporteur.

The Supreme Court's decision soured the political climate, and negotiations on the constitutional amendment were then led directly by the future Finance Minister, Fernando Haddad. Even so, the government of President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was unable to prevent the validity period of the increased spending cap from being reduced from two years to just one.

In addition to expanding the spending cap for Bolsa Família, the PEC also opens up a margin of 23 billion reais in next year's budget for investments, based on a portion of the government's excess revenue.

The text also maintained the provision that the Lula government will send, by August of next year, a new fiscal framework to replace the spending cap.

During the debate on the proposal in plenary session this Tuesday, deputies allied with President-elect Lula defended its approval.

"Who needs this Bolsa Família amendment?... Those who need this amendment are the 33 million people in Brazil who are going hungry," stated Congressman Bohn Gass (PT-RS), who considered the vote the "most important" at the moment, referring to the proposal as the Bolsa Família amendment.

However, there were also those who opposed the approval. The Novo party even filed a request to postpone the vote, but the initiative did not receive enough votes to pass it.

"We opposed the Precatórios Amendment, which created a hole in the spending cap; we opposed the Kamikaze Amendment, which created another hole in the spending cap; and now we oppose this Explosion Amendment, or Spending Amendment, Argentina Amendment, Lula Amendment, Transition Amendment. Call it what you want. And the reason is very simple: the size of the Brazilian state doesn't fit in the population's pockets, and hasn't for a long time," said Congressman Tiago Mitraud (Novo-MG).

The payment of the R$600 Bolsa Família benefit would not, in practice, depend on the PEC (Proposed Constitutional Amendment), since Supreme Court Justice Gilmar Mendes issued a ruling excluding resources for the program's payment from the spending cap. Representatives of the elected government, however, said they would continue negotiations to approve the PEC, which is more comprehensive than just the payment of the social program and provides greater political security.

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