The Transition Amendment is being negotiated in the Senate. The final text should be presented this Tuesday.
The Transition Amendment seeks to guarantee the R$ 600 payment of the Bolsa Família program. The text should separate the social program from the "spending cap" for 4 years.
Current Brazil Network - The Senate began discussing this Monday (21) the proposed amendment to the Constitution that will allow the future government to guarantee social benefits for people at risk. The Transition PEC aims to guarantee the payment of R$ 600 to beneficiaries of Auxílio Brasil, which will return to being Bolsa Família, in addition to other measures. The objective is to guarantee legal security so that the execution of the program is not impeded by the “spending ceiling”. In practice, the budget for 2023, presented by the Bolsonaro government, is a “piece of fiction”. For its fulfillment, the team of the president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, defends the need for the adjustments proposed in the PEC.
The general rapporteur for the Budget in the House, Marcelo Castro (MDB-PI), has already shown himself to be in favor of the PEC. Castro received a draft of the matter from the vice-president-elect, Geraldo Alckmin (PSB), last Wednesday (16). The proposal opens the possibility of removing Bolsa Família from the “spending ceiling” for the entire next term. Senator Randolfe Rodrigues (Rede-AP) said that the complete text of the PEC will be presented this Tuesday (22).
"The text won't be very different from what you already know, what's already being publicized, with a margin of four years," said Randolfe. "Tomorrow, at the latest, I believe we can achieve it. Senator Marcelo Castro is expediting things," he added. For approval, the text will need 308 votes in the Chamber of Deputies and 49 in the Senate, in two rounds.
Ways
Former Finance and Planning Minister Nelson Barbosa also participated in the meeting. Barbosa is part of Lula's transition team and explained to journalists that preliminary analyses have found a space of R$ 136 billion in next year's budget.
According to Barbosa, in 2022, the Bolsonaro government is expected to spend the equivalent of 19% of GDP. The budget proposal for the following year, taking into account economic growth projections, forecasts spending of 17,6%.
Therefore, this amount would not be fiscal expansion, but rather a recovery. "This means that if you add up to R$ 136 billion in spending to next year's budget, in terms of the size of the economy, it will not be fiscal expansion. The spending will be the same as what was actually done in the last year of the Bolsonaro government," he said.
This amount represents more than 68% of the R$ 198 billion annually foreseen in the Transition Amendment. This value is composed of R$ 175 billion for the Bolsa Família program, and R$ 23 billion for socio-environmental projects and the operating costs of federal universities and institutes.
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