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A few hours before the end of 2020, the president Jair bolsonaro edited a provisional measure again restricting the granting of the Continuous service benefit (BPC), which is paid to low-income seniors and people with disabilities, who earn up to a quarter of the minimum wage. The text is effective immediately and may exclude around 500,000 Brazilians who would have access to assistance, if the income criterion is broadened, as previously studied. These people must go to court to obtain the benefit.
The measure was not unanimous in the government, it generated clashes between ministries and should provoke controversy in Congress, especially with the end of emergency aid to vulnerable people, the fear of increasing poverty 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 was against it and was victorious. 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. The regulatory decree, however, was not edited, rendering the device ineffective.
Crisis
Parliament has tried more than once to expand the scope of the BPC, and the latest attack, approved in March 2020, created a crisis in the economic team and needed to be vetoed by President Bolsonaro.
The congressmen had extended the benefits to the elderly and disabled 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. For this reason, the new MP had to be edited 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 extension of this income range to 1/3 or 1/2 minimum wage when the vulnerability was greater.
The measure would go against a decision already taken by the Federal Supreme Court (STF), which declared that the income criterion is insufficient 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 reducing prosecution costs and anti-fraud measures, which can save up to R $ 10 billion.
Today BPC is the most judicialized benefit in the Union. The assessment among expansion advocates was that by standardizing the rules and adhering to the understanding of the decisions already made by the 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 criteria the income earmarked for the purchase of repairs.
