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BRASILIA – A few hours before the end of 2020, the president Jair bolsonaro issued a provisional measure again restricting the granting of the Continuing Payment Benefit (BPC), paid to low-income seniors and disabled people, who earn up to a quarter of the minimum wage. The text takes effect immediately and, as Estadão / Broadcast anticipated, it can exclude around 500 thousand Brazilians who would have access to assistance, if the income criterion were broadened as previously studied. These people must go to court to obtain the benefit.
The measure was not unanimous within the government, it generated a confrontation between ministries and should generate controversy in the National 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 in the country. .
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 is signed by Bolsonaro, the Minister of Citizenship, Onyx Lorenzoni, and the Executive Secretary of the Ministry of Economy, Marcelo Guaranys, acting minister during the holidays. Paulo guedes.
The MP once again restricts the BPC to those with a family income of up to 1/4 of the minimum wage per person (equivalent to R $ 275 of the new floor of R $ 1,100 in force as of January 1). This rule was already in force in 2020, but an article of the emergency aid law allowed raising the cut-off line to half the minimum wage, depending on the degree of vulnerability. However, the regulatory decree was not issued, rendering the provision invalid.
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 Jair 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 listings 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 comply with a decision already issued by the Federal Supreme Court (STF), who stated that the income criterion is insufficient to classify, by itself, whether the person is vulnerable or not.
As Estadão / Broadcast revealed in September, the change would allow the inclusion of almost 500 thousand people in the BPC, with 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.
According to sources heard by the report, the economic team did not understand the indication of an economy with fewer judgments as sufficient to offset the permanent increase in spending. The decision frustrated technicians who were working to reshape the policy. The understanding of this wing is that the beneficiaries will access the BPC through the judicial system, in a disorganized way, which is more expensive for the public coffers.
In the last weeks of December, the MP became a “hot potato” within the government, as it has a high political cost. By pointing to a tightening of the rules of a social policy, which has penetration in regions such as the North and the Northeast, Bolsonaro may upset the newly conquered allies in the Centrão, a bloc of parties that began to give political support to the president. Some sources within the government already take for granted a change of deputy in the Legislative.
Pente-up
The government had already created a working group to develop guidelines for the review of the BPC. The objective is to map possible sources of fraud or undue concession and maintenance of the care provision and to draw up, based on this diagnosis, a plan to carry out the reevaluations.
Today, the BPC costs about R $ 62 billion and reaches 4.9 million Brazilians. The benefit is one of the most judicialized in the federal sphere, with a profusion of decisions that make the understanding of what should or should not be computed in the income criteria to receive aid more flexible.
Although it is a relevant expense in the Budget, the BPC has not gone through a wide comb until today, like what was done in sickness compensation. There have already been occasional discoveries of deceased persons or with incomes exceeding the limit of the assistance benefit, but the task of the working group will be to draw up a review plan with greater scope and that can be permanently incorporated into the routine work of the organs.
The inter-ministerial ordinance that created the group was published in the Official Gazette on December 29 and is effective as of February 1, 2021. The measure comes at a time when, on the one hand, the demand for social spending is growing, and on the other hand, the government tries to find space in an already tight budget to make policy.
The group will have four members, representatives of the Special Secretariat for Social Development of the Ministry of Citizenship, the Special Secretariat for Social Welfare and Labor of the Ministry of Economy, the INSS and the National Secretariat for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities of the Ministry of Women, Family and Human Rights.
The representatives will have 90 days, extendable for another 90 days, to present the study, which must include the diagnosis of sources of fraud and undue concession, the scope of the review, the criteria to prioritize the benefits to be reviewed, the phases of operation and the schedule of periodic revaluations of BPC.
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