The general rapporteur for the 2023 Budget, senator Marcelo Castro (MDB-PI), stated that he should present his opinion by the evening of this Monday, 12. The decision was taken this Sunday, 11, after a meeting with the president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the future Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad. The parliamentarian said that he takes into account the text of the Proposed Amendment to the Constitution (PEC) of the transition approved in the Senate to prepare the Annual Budget Law (LOA).
The expectation, according to Castro, is that the report will be voted on by the Joint Budget Commission (CMO) on Thursday, the 15th, and analyzed in the plenary of Congress the following week. The senator stated that Health will be the priority of the 2023 budget, with R$ 22.7 billion in resources, followed by Education. Other priority areas will be housing, infrastructure and public investment in general.
“I must file my report tomorrow night. So, as a budget space is being created with the approval of the PEC, we went to show (Lula and Haddad) how this space would be recomposed. So, we are following the suggestion, the initiative of the transition team and we have presented the changes that we thought were necessary. In such a way that everyone was very enlightened”, declared Castro.
Also participating in the meeting were vice-president-elect Geraldo Alckmin, senator-elect Wellington Dias (PT-PI), PT president Gleisi Hoffmann, future chief minister of the Civil House, Rui Costa, and former minister Aloizio Mercadante. , quoted for the presidency of the BNDES.
The transition PEC, as it passed in the Senate, expands the spending ceiling – the rule that limits the growth of government expenses to inflation variation – by R$ 145 billion to pay for Bolsa Família. It also removes R$ 23 billion in extraordinary revenues from the ceiling to finance public investments, in addition to allowing the release of the secret budget later this year.
In order to approve the proposal in the Senate, Senator Jaques Wagner (PT-BA) had to announce, on Lula’s behalf, an agreement to reduce the expansion of the spending ceiling of R$ 175 billion, as foreseen in the rapporteur’s initial opinion, Alexandre Silveira (PSD-MG), to R$ 145 billion.
As the R$ 175 billion initially foreseen would be enough to fund the entire Bolsa Família, the R$ 105 billion already foreseen in the Budget for the income transfer program would be free. Now, the opening in the 2023 LOA will be R$ 75 billion, that is, R$ 30 billion less that will have to be used to complete the payment of the social benefit. According to Castro, however, the recomposition of funds should also occur through extraordinary revenues that should come out of the cap.
The senator’s expectation is that the PEC be approved by Wednesday, the 14th, in the House, due to the tight schedule, since the LOA needs to be approved by the following week, before the recess of Congress. In his view, the judgment of the secret budget in the Federal Supreme Court (STF) should not disturb the procedure, although congressmen see Lula’s “fingerprints” in the process.
Castro defended that the Court make a “modulation” of the scheme, instead of declaring the amendments of the general rapporteur unconstitutional.
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