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A few hours before the end of 2020, President Jair Bolsonaro (no party) issued an interim measure again restricting the granting of the Continuous Benefit (BPC), paid to the elderly and low-income disabled people, who earn up to a quarter . minimum salary.
The text comes into effect immediately and, as anticipated by the Broadcast (Grupo Estado’s real-time news system), it may exclude around 500 thousand Brazilians who would have access to assistance, if the income criteria were expanded, as stated had previously studied. These people must go to court to obtain the benefit.
The measure was not unanimous in the government, it generated confrontations between ministries and should generate controversy in Congress, especially with the end of emergency aid to vulnerable people, the fear of increasing poverty rates in the country and a greater demand for social programs.
A gradual increase in value, as the Ministry of Citizenship and a wing of the economic area wanted, would have an additional cost of R $ 5.8 billion per year. The area that deals with the fiscal part of the economy opposed and won. The text was signed by Bolsonaro, the Minister of Citizenship, Onyx Lorenzoni, and the executive secretary of the Ministry of Economy, Marcelo Guaranys, acting minister during Paulo Guedes’ vacation.
The MP once again restricts the BPC to those who have a family income of up to 25% of the minimum wage per person (equivalent to R $ 275 of the new floor of R $ 1,100 that came into effect on Friday). This rule was already in force in 2020, but an article of the emergency aid law allowed raising the cut-off line to 50% of the minimum wage, depending on the degree of vulnerability. However, the regulatory decree was not issued, rendering the provision invalid.
Crisis
Parliament has tried more than once to expand the scope of the BPC, and the latest attack, approved in March 2020, generated a crisis in the economic team and needed to be vetoed by President Bolsonaro. The congressmen had extended the benefits to the elderly and people with disabilities with incomes of up to 1/2 minimum wage, regardless of the degree of vulnerability, which would have an additional cost of around R $ 20 billion per year.
With the president’s veto, the BPC was left without a concession rule as of 2021, which would leave the government without a legal basis to authorize new inclusions in the program as of January 1. Therefore, it was necessary to edit the new MP before December 31st so as not to leave anyone unattended.
Technicians from the Ministry of Citizenship and the INSS tried to draft a decree to regulate the new concessions. The idea was to keep the criterion of 1/4 of the minimum wage as a general rule, but allow the expansion of this income range to 1/3 or 1/2 minimum wage when vulnerability was greater. The measure would go against a decision already issued by the Federal Supreme Court (STF), which declared the criterion of insufficient income to classify, by itself, whether the person is vulnerable or not.
As the Transmission revealed in September, the change would allow the inclusion of almost 500 thousand people in the BPC, at an additional cost of R $ 5.8 billion per year. The extra expense would be offset by cost reduction with prosecution and measures to combat fraud, which can save up to R $ 10 billion.
The BPC is today the most judicialized benefit in the Union. The assessment among expansion advocates was that by standardizing the rules and adhering to understandings of decisions already made by judges, the benefit would be “pacified” and resources saved. The measure could, for example, incorporate decisions that have already been res judicata, such as the one that excludes from the calculation of the access criterion the income earmarked for the purchase of medicines. The information is from the newspaper The State of S. Paulo.
