The 2025 Budget bill allocates R$38.9 billion for mandatory parliamentary amendments. The amount is 3.46% higher than that proposed by the government for the 2024 Budget, but 26.6% lower than the R$53 billion approved by Congress, when including committee amendments.
At the beginning of the year, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had vetoed R$5.6 billion in amendments by standing committees. Congress, however, overturned the veto and returned R$4.2 billion of this amount. In total, the amendments amount to R$52 billion this year.
Budget resources whose allocation is the responsibility of deputies and senators, parliamentary amendments are usually applied in the states and electoral strongholds of the congressmen’s origin. Traditionally, the government controls the pace of approval of amendments, but the Executive’s control has diminished with the increase in the participation of mandatory amendments, whose execution is mandatory and which currently occupy almost all parliamentary amendments.
Agreement between Powers
Since at least 2015, Congress has been expanding its control over the federal budget. In the 2024 Annual Budget Law (LOA), for example, more than R$49.2 billion in amendments were inserted. Ten years ago, in 2014, this amount was R$6.1 billion. The Attorney General’s Office (PGR) is currently conducting more than a dozen investigations into suspected misappropriation of funds.
With difficulty in tracking the resources released through Pix amendments, a modality created in 2019 that reveals the name of the benefited parliamentarian, but dispenses with the specific allocation to a project or program, the minister of the Federal Supreme Court (STF) Flávio Dino suspendedin August, the transfers of practically all parliamentary amendments to the Budget.
On the 20th, the Three Powers – Executive, Legislative and Judiciary – announced an agreement which increases transparency in the release of amendments. It was agreed that parliamentary amendments must comply with criteria of “transparency, traceability and correctness”, with information on who is making the nomination and where the money is going. The agreement is expected to be released this week.
