The suspended the execution of the amendments on the grounds that there is no transparency and that interference by the Legislature in the execution of the Budget would violate the essential separation of Powers clause.
Furthermore, the high financial volume would end up “making the achievement of public policies unfeasible, reaching the core of the Principle of Separation of Powers”, according to the minister’s preliminary decision.
To supposedly adapt to the requirements of the STF, the . But it aggravates rather than solves the problems: it deepens the lack of transparency, consolidates interference in execution and increases the total value of amendments.
Under the label of “commission amendment” art. 5th reinstitutes the basic mechanism of “rapporteur’s amendments”, already declared unconstitutional.
In the text, “commission amendment” was the nickname given to a reserve of resources, which will be approved without any definition of how and where they will be spent. After the Budget is approved, during its execution, party leaders will say where that money will be applied.
Commissions became surrogacy. Those in charge of the allocation of the money are some Congress leaders, as was the case with the rapporteur’s amendments. A budget shielded from democratic discussion on resource allocation priorities.
The bill also regresses by making the value of “commission amendments” official. Today they do not have previously reserved funds. Now, there will be an amount of R$11.5 billion previously allocated for this, adjusted annually by the IPCA.
For a government that intends to present a spending control package, the account is starting out negative at R$11.5 billion.
The art. 11 also interferes with budget execution, by imposing severe restrictions on the deadlines for technical analysis of amendments by the Executive and holding the manager responsible for non-compliance.
The Constitution defines that individual and bench amendments are corrected by the variation in net current revenue. The art. 12 changes the correction to the same expense variation defined in the fiscal framework rule. You cannot change the Constitution via complementary law. Therefore, the only part that would supposedly limit the value of the amendments should not prosper.
The art. 13 fails to allow the contingency and blocking of amendments to be smaller than those made for Executive expenses.
The bill also fails to advance, such as limiting bench amendments to “structuring projects”, a concept not defined in the text. Furthermore, it allows bench amendments to be divided into up to 10% of the total value, which will maintain the current fragmentation of resources.
The text timidly advances in reducing the number of bench amendments, in restrictions on Pix amendments, and in the definition of “technical impediments” to the execution of amendments. That doesn’t make up for the setbacks.
The powers of the Legislature should be limited to debating and voting on the Budget, as occurs in developed countries. Once approved, it is up to the Executive to execute the expenditure and the Legislative to monitor its execution.
