Brazilian Senate President Considering Vote on Welfare Reform Next Week

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Senate President, Davi Alcolumbre, is working on the feasibility of a plenary vote on the Proposed Amendment to the Constitution (PEC) of the Social Welfare Reform on Wednesday next week, September 11th.

“There is some disagreement over deadlines, but if there is no objection from party leaders or political parties, we will try to set it for Wednesday next week, in the first round. If the understanding and the agreement does not jeopardize the calendar, we can defer it to the next week to try to comply with the procedure agreement,” the senator said to journalists.

After an almost ten-hour session, the Justice and Constitution Committee (CCJ) approved the base text of the PEC of the Social Welfare reform and its amendments on Wednesday afternoon, September 4th.

Now, the proposal proceeds to the plenary, where it will run the gamut of five discussion sessions before going for the first round of voting.

The vote in the second round is scheduled for October 10th. The Senate president is optimistic about approval next month. “Our deadline is still what we have established in the agreement, which is to vote on the PEC on October 10th and to set up a session for enactment”.

Out of the hundreds of individually proposed amendments, only one was approved. This amendment, authored by Senator Eduardo Braga (MDB-AM) stipulates that pensioners will not receive less than one minimum wage.

The remaining amendments have been rejected. There would be a decrease in revenue for the federal government, as argued by the government leader in the Senate, Fernando Bezerra (MDB-PE). A few amendments had a narrow loss, such as the one proposing the maintenance of the current rule to receive the salary bonus.

Simone Tebet (MDB-MS), CCJ president rejected it. With this rejection, the PEC keeps the provision that the benefit will only be paid to those who earn up to R$1,364 per month, and not R$2,000, as is currently the case.

Among the other rejected amendments were some suggesting the reduction of the minimum age for retirement in the general regime, the reduction of the minimum age for professions involving exposure to materials harmful to health and those that called for a full pension payment to mothers after their children had reached the age of majority.