Member of the transition team, in the area of social assistance, Senator Simone Tebet (MDB-MS) said this Thursday (1st), during a press conference to present the first results of the work, that the sector lost about 96% of the budget for the coming year. 
“Roughly speaking, there was a cut of something around 96% of the budget of the Ministry of Citizenship”, he declared to journalists who cover the transition at the Centro de Cultura Banco do Brasil (CCBB), in Brasília. To guarantee the maintenance of the Brazil Aid at R$ 600, plus the extra payment of R$ 150 per child up to six years old, the working group points out the need for at least R$ 70 billion more in the Budget. In addition, extra resources would be needed in other essential social assistance programs.
The senator said that it would also be necessary to include another R$ 2 billion in gas aid. “Other than that, so that at least SUAS [Sistema Único de Assistência Social] work, keeping the 8 thousand Cras [Centro de Referência de Assistência Social]7 thousand service units, we need [outros] BRL 2.6 billion in current values. That aside values for cisterns and all the other programs that were abandoned”, said Tebet. Just in the folder that takes care of the most vulnerable, the extra budget could reach R$ 80 billion.
For the emedebista senator, the minimum extra-ceiling spending necessary to recompose next year’s budget can hardly be less than R$ 140 billion, considering the needs of other areas. Proposed Constitutional Amendment (PEC) presented by the transition team provides for the exclusion of Bolsa Família (currently Auxílio Brasil) from the Spending Ceiling rule, which could reach more than R$ 170 billion, according to technical calculations released by the elected government.
In addition to Tebet, the former ministers of Social Development and Fight against Hunger, Tereza Campello and Márcia Lopes, and the coordinator of the transition work groups, Aloizio Mercadante, participated in the press conference.
According to Campello, the current government disorganized updates to the Single Registry of Social Programs (CadÚnico) and defended the resumption of fundamental information for monitoring vulnerable families that receive government assistance, such as school attendance data, information on vaccination and access to other basic public services such as water and sanitation. “We need to build a strategy to resume updating CadÚnico, to resume information on school attendance. We do not have vaccination information for more than half of the poorest children. We want to know if they have access to sanitation, water, if they have changed address or no,” said the former minister.
irregularities
The transition team also claims to have identified possible irregularities with the exponential increase in single-person families, those formed by an individual, as beneficiaries of the Auxílio Brasil. According to the calculations presented, based on official data from the program, between December 2018 and October 2022 there was a 197% increase in the total number of adults living alone and receiving the benefit, while the growth of families with two or more members grew by 21% in the same period.
“The population was induced to register in this way. It is not a mistake by poor people, it is a mistake by the State”, said Tereza Campello.
“The current government has placed more than 2 million people in the social program, without any management, without criteria and without follow-up, and now it is giving the new government the task of withdrawing these people from the social program”, criticized Mercadante.
