The Chamber of Deputies began tonight (20) the analysis of the Proposed Amendment to the Transitional Constitution. The matter has already been approved in the Senate and aims to guarantee resources for social programs in the 2023 Union Budget, such as the continuity of the payment of the Auxílio Brasil of R$ 600, which will once again be called Bolsa Família, and the real increase in the minimum wage. from January.
The proposal establishes that the new government will have BRL 145 billion in addition to the ceiling, of which BRL 70 billion will be used to fund the social benefit of BRL 600 with an additional BRL 150 per child up to six years old. The PEC also opens fiscal space for an additional BRL 23 billion in investments for a period of two years and not for four years, as the transition team wanted.
According to senator Marcelo Castro (MDB-PI), author of the PEC and general rapporteur for the Budget for 2023, the other R$75 billion can be allocated to expenses such as health policies (R$16.6 billion), including the Popular Pharmacy program and the real increase in the minimum wage (R$ 6.8 billion).
The proposal being voted on, with the report by Deputy Elmar Nascimento (União-BA) brings some changes approved at a meeting of leaders, such as reducing the duration of the PEC from two to one year and exempting the Executive from asking Congress for authorization to issue public debt securities to finance current expenditures of that amount over the next two years, circumventing the so-called “golden rule”. For 2023, resources will still be left out of the primary result target.
Procedure
As it is an amendment to the Constitution, the matter needs to be approved by 308 parliamentarians, in two rounds of voting. If there is a change to the text already approved in the Senate, the matter will need to be returned for analysis by the senators.
However, the concern of the future government is with the deadline for this analysis, since the parliamentary recess begins on December 23, as long as the Union Budget for 2023 is approved. In practice, if this does not happen within that period, parliamentarians are in a “white recess”, a kind of informal recess.
