The National Congress started today (2) the legislative year. During the ceremony, leaders of the Three Powers spoke about the pandemic, about relevant agendas approved in 2021 and also about the elections. The President of the Republic, Jair Bolsonaro, was the first to speak, followed by the president of the Federal Supreme Court, Luiz Fux. The presidents of the Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira, and of the Federal Senate, Rodrigo Pacheco spoke shortly afterwards.
Senate
The president of Congress, Senator Rodrigo Pacheco, gave a long speech at the solemn opening session of the legislative work in 2022. Pacheco gave an overview of projects approved last year and projected the Congress for the coming months.
He joined the Chamber’s president, Arthur Lira, and spoke at a Congress in full swing, focused on important issues for the country and not anticipating the electoral debate.
“We need to break with the paradigm that, in an election year, the Legislative Power is stiff. We need to understand the difficulties we face, the needs we have and also our responsibilities as representatives of the people. We cannot leave urgent matters in a state of dormancy,” he said.
The president of Congress highlighted, among important agendas for this year, the approval of an administrative reform or, at least, specific projects for “modernization of the public sector”. He also cited tax reform. “We need to promote the simplification of the collection system,” he said. Currently, the topic is in the Senate’s Constitution and Justice Committee (CCJ) and should be addressed as a priority by the committee’s chairman, Senator Davi Alcolumbre (DEM-AP).
Pacheco stated that Congress will promote “a stable and secure regulatory environment, which will allow the creation of jobs, as well as the structural fight against inflation”. He also dedicated a part of the speech to elections and the defense of democracy.
The senator, who is the favorite to be the PSD candidate for the Presidency of the Republic, called for a clean election, without “mass shooting manipulations through robots”. He also gave a message to the candidates: “to the losers, respect the results of the polls”. He then asked for the debate of ideas and concrete proposals.
2021 balance sheet
In his speech, Pacheco condemned the attempts by society to spread misinformation about the pandemic. For him, these people used the speed of the media for “the impressive spread of disinformation.”
He celebrated, however, the habit of isolation policies, mask use and vaccination. In addition, he praised the rapid adaptation of Congress to the new reality imposed by the pandemic.
“The National Congress, therefore, knew how to adapt to the circumstances imposed by the pandemic and managed not only to maintain, but to increase its productivity, whether working remotely, in person or in a hybrid way. In fact, we were the first parliament in the world to implement a remote deliberation system.”
Pacheco also recalled some projects approved in Congress that helped the Public Power to fight the pandemic. Among them, authorizations for the government to assume civil liability risks in vaccine procurement contracts and to adhere to the Covid-19 Vaccine Global Access Instrument, the Covax Facility, of the World Health Organization (WHO).
He cited projects for granting credit to micro and small companies and emergency aid to workers in the cultural sector, known as Lei Paulo Gustavo, in honor of the actor and comedian killed by covid-19. Pacheco also mentioned the approval of the Proposed Amendment to the Constitution known as PEC dos Precatórios, as an instrument of attention to the country’s fiscal goals. According to him, the approval of the PEC demonstrated the Parliament’s commitment to fiscal responsibility.
Chamber
The president of the Chamber, deputy Arthur Lira (PL-AL), stated that the House was “the great guarantor of stability” in the country in 2021. For the congressman, the Legislative is “the most transparent and democratic power of the Republic.”
“The Chamber of Deputies, in the last year, despite the turmoil, was the great guarantor of stability. It held up fits and starts, cooled crises and reduced pressure. controversies, which I would call here, confrontational matters, in the sense of modernizing laws and codes that were past time to be updated”, he said.
Lira highlighted projects approved in 2021, such as the autonomy of the Central Bank, land regulation, environmental licensing, modulation of payment of precatories, amendment of the administrative improbity law. “We also typify crimes against the Democratic State of Law, we approved the new Electoral Code, the law that changes the incidence of ICMS on fuel, among others”, he added.
According to the deputy, unemployment and inflation will be the two focuses of the Chamber in 2022. In addition, he included tax reform as a priority for parliamentarians this year.
“There are still more than 12 million Brazilians unemployed, which forces us to continue in the direction of reforms, to improve the business environment, optimize the organization of the State and generate employment and income,” he said.
Arthur Lira also highlighted the controversy surrounding fuel pricing in the country and the need to create instruments to reduce the impact of oil prices on the value passed on to Brazilian consumers. Last year, the Chamber approved a measure that modifies the calculation of the Tax on the Circulation of Goods and Services (ICMS), so that it is calculated per unit of fuel measurement and no longer on its value.
“This House understands that the solution would partially mitigate the variations in oil prices. We know that there are those who defend a different solution. There is no problem, we can discuss and evolve towards the construction of a joint solution. vision, is to postpone the matter indefinitely and ignore the effects of its perverse impacts on the national economy and Brazilian society”, he said.
