The 2026 Public Policy Notebook of the liberal group Livres proposes the suspension of part of public spending, when the budget is not approved or public accounting rules are not complied with — in a kind of partial “shutdown”.
According to the organization, the idea is not to paralyze essential services, but to prevent the Executive and Legislative branches from circumventing fiscal rules, making exceptions in the public budget.
“Today, fiscal irresponsibility does not remain with those who create the problem. It appears to the citizen in higher interest rates, less investment and worse public services. The proposal is to make the public machine feel the cost of breaking the law itself”, says Magno Karl, political scientist and executive director of Livres.
The term shutdown is used in the United States to define the economic blackout that occurs when Congress does not approve the federal budget within the deadline. In October last year, American President Donald Trump faced the country’s president.
The strike, which easily surpassed the previous record of 35 days, recorded during his first term in 2018. The measure led to the temporary suspension of hundreds of thousands of federal employees — while those considered essential were forced to work without pay.
In Brazil, the Constitution determines that congressmen can only go on vacation after the approval of the following year’s budget, but the rule has already been broken. In the most recent case, 2024, Congress ended the legislative year without voting on the LOA (Annual Budget Law) due to impasses over the . The text was just .
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