Brazil’s House of Representatives approves the slimmed-down transitional PEC in the first round

On Tuesday night (Dec. 20), the House of Representatives approved in the first round the transition PEC, which guarantees for a period of one year the payments of the Bolsa Família (government hand-out), besides enabling social programs and campaign promises of the president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

There were 331 votes in favor of the proposal and 168 against it.

The deputy’s opinion shortens from two to one year the term for the extension of the spending cap of R$ 145 (US$27) billion.

Unlike the text that the Federal Senate approved on Dec. 8, the deputies made changes after a series of agreements.

Among them, the biggest stalemate was about the duration of the proposal, which was reduced from two to one year.

In all, the text foresees an impact of R$168 billion.

To conclude the vote in the first round, deputies need to analyze the parties’ amendments to change parts of the text.

According to the substitute rapporteur, Deputy Elmar Nascimento, the budget space will not be valid for 2024, as stated in the text from the Senate.

Due to the changes, the matter will return to that House for a new vote.

Another change resulted from the agreement between the party leaders and the elected government to allocate the resources of the amendments of the general rapporteur of the Budget 2023, considered unconstitutional by the Supreme Court (STF) on Monday (Dec. 19).

Under the agreement, these resources will be divided between individual amendments and discretionary execution programs by the Executive (non-mandatory execution).

According to the text, the general rapporteur may submit up to R$9.85 billion in amendments for public policies (50.77% of the R$ 19.4 billion amendments of the rapporteur considered unconstitutional).

The other half was directed to individual amendments, increasing from R$11.7 billion in 2023 (R$19.7 million per parliamentarian) to about R$21 billion.