Lula has already released R$ 16 billion in amendments on the eve of big votes

To guarantee the approval of matters of interest to the government in Congress, President Lula’s economic team has unceremoniously opened the Budget tap in favor of parliamentary amendments. The give-and-take policy was repeated during the week in the approval of the tax reform by the Chamber of Deputies.

In a single day, on the eve of the vote, according to data from the Senate’s Siga Brasil portal, R$ 5.3 billion were released. Adding to R$ 1.1 billion released after approval of the PEC, and R$ 2.1 billion when the PEC was ruled by the Chamber (on July 4), the tax reform effort alone consumed R$ 8.5 billion . It was the peak, so far, of the strategy of raising votes through the distribution of resources to states and municipalities according to criteria, and choice, by parliamentarians. The faucet is opened with more intensity always close to important government votes, such as the Fiscal Framework and the Ministerial Reform MP, in May.

To compensate for a shifting and uncertain parliamentary base, the Lula government not only broke the record for the release of amendments in the first six months of the mandate (three times more than the volume at the beginning of Bolsonaro’s mandate), but also intensified the transfer via “Amendas Pix”, so called by Budget technicians because they go directly to the states and municipalities, without transparency, inspection or information on the destination of the resource.

The BRL 5.3 billion released before the approval of PEC 45/2019 was the largest amount ever transferred via “pix amendments” to date, since the creation of this modality in 2019, and already represents 75% of the total reserved for these amendments in 2023.