Despite controlling the allocation of the record amount of , the Legislative Joint Budget Committee negotiates with the government () an extra end-of-year budget for each of its members, called by some a “panettone amendment”.
Under the argument that this is an unwritten tradition, but always followed every year, the amounts discussed are R$3 million for each member of the commission, with R$5 million for sectoral rapporteurs.
In addition to the final value not yet being defined, the source of the resource is also the subject of dispute.
According to reports from parliamentarians heard by Sheetthe government wants the money to be removed from the so-called committee amendments, money that theoretically should have its application decided by the thematic committees of the Chamber and the , but which in practice is used by the government, party leaders and the top brass of Congress to obtain support for their demands.
The members of the Budget Committee defend that the “panettone amendment” be implemented in the government’s own Budget, under the RP2 heading, in yet another dribble in attempts to monitor and trace parliamentary amendments.
In a statement, the Secretariat for Institutional Relations of the Presidency of the Republic, headed by , stated that it “denies and repudiates the allegations that the report attributes to anonymous sources”.
A Sheet confirmed the existence of negotiations with eight parliamentarians, four of them from the PT, Gleisi’s party. Everyone spoke in the “off record” condition, journalistic jargon that means that the source consulted passed the information on the condition of not being identified.
The Joint Congressional Budget Committee is made up of 30 federal deputies and 10 full senators, with an equal number of substitutes.
Its role is to analyze and approve the LDO (Budget Guidelines Law) each year, which serves as the basis for the LOA (Annual Budget Law). The two have not yet been voted on, but the objective is to complete the analysis by December.
The report also sought out the rapporteurs of the LDO, Gervásio Maia (PSB-PB), and the LOA, Isnaldo Bulhões Jr. (MDB-AL), but there was no response.
There is R$50.3 billion reserved in the 2025 Budget for parliamentary amendments. Of this amount, the government has already committed R$32.23 billion and paid R$21.9 billion.
Around R$38.8 billion come from individual tax amendments and state benches. There is still R$11.5 billion in funds defined by Congress’ thematic committees, the portion most vulnerable to cuts and the pace of execution imposed by Planalto.
The explosion of funds began in 2020, when the committed resources jumped from R$18.2 billion to R$50 billion from one year to the next. The increase drained the budget of the ministries, which had to pay for costs and investments defined by parliamentarians.
Even with unprecedented control by parliamentarians, the federal government has negotiated with Congress, not only at the end of the year, extra funds that are not marked as amendments.
In practice, the resources also escape the controls imposed by the (Supreme Federal Court), such as work plan requirements or the creation of single accounts to receive certain types of amendments.
At the Ministry of Health, transfers approaching R$5 billion are informal. The government denies that the funds are used in negotiations with Congress, even though parliamentarians themselves refer to the funds as their own indication in official letters, social media and dialogues with states and municipalities, such as
In the 1990s, the commission was the epicenter of one of the main political scandals of the end of the last century, the so-called scheme — the CPI that investigated the case pointed out that a group of deputies received bribes from mayors and companies to direct their amendments.
