The minister officially responsible for negotiating with the Legislature, Alexandre Padilha, is left out of the discussions
The meetings that the president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) has held talks with ministers, the economic team and technicians about the possibility of cutting expenses and excluded the minister Alexandre Padilha until now. He is the head of the Institutional Relations Secretariat and officially responsible for negotiating projects with the National Congress.
None of the meetings held with the president regarding the spending reduction package have had the minister so far. According to the Poder360he does not even participate in side conversations and is in the dark about the progress of the proposals.
At the November 4th meeting, for example, one of the first to become public about the spending cuts, Lula 3h20 discussing the topic. Padilha received 2 deputies at Planalto at the same time.
The president must negotiate the spending review directly with the presidents of the Chamber, (PP-AL), and the Senate, (PSD-MG), the Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad.
It has not yet been defined who will have the mission of helping to approve the text in Congress. Among the measures studied by Planalto is an amendment to the Constitution. The proposal is not closed. It would need 49 votes in the Senate and 308 in the Chamber.
The political wing of the government says it will be involved when there are concrete proposals to be negotiated. Planalto estimates possible approval in 2024, but there is skepticism.
What is most likely at the moment is that any more complex approval will be delayed until next year. minister to Planning, at the end of October that most of the proposals could only be approved in the 1st half of 2025.
The zero presence of the group responsible for political articulation in the discussions indicates a greater direct role for Lula and Haddad on the topic. Furthermore, it may indicate that the discussions are not yet mature enough to be formalized to the Legislature.
To approve an amendment to the Constitution in 2024, Lula would have to pay a high price. The elections in the Chamber, the Senate and a probable ministerial reform at the beginning of 2025 are included in the calculation.
Expense cut
The measures are resisted by the political wing of the government. The Minister of Finance has been under pressure to deliver the set of actions. on Monday (4.Nov.2024) that the set of measures to reduce the trajectory of public expenditure should be released last week. The spending review package .
The economic team is studying reviewing expenses with the BPC (Continuous Payment Benefit), Fundeb (Fund for Maintenance and Development of Basic Education and Valorization of Education Professionals), unemployment insurance and salary bonus. Read the infographics that show the evolution of spending in recent years.
For financial agents, the measures are necessary to provide sustainability to the fiscal framework – the law that replaced the spending ceiling in 2023. Market estimates indicate that the federal government will not meet the targets in 2024, 2025, 2026 and 2027.
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