Commission approves 2026 budget, with 61 billion reais for parliamentary amendments

The approved budget proposal projects a surplus of 34.5 billion reais and allocated a total of 61 billion reais in parliamentary amendments during an election year.

To achieve this amount of amendments, Congress eliminated social security benefits and scholarships from the Pé-de-Meia program. In the area of ​​social security, the text imposed a net reduction of approximately 6.3 billion reais.

The reduction in Social Security has worried the government and, in the opinion of technicians, should require the blocking of resources throughout the year.

To allow for the expansion of parliamentary amendments, Congress:

• Unemployment insurance took 391 million reais,
• Reduction of gas aid from 5.1 billion reais to 4.7 billion reais;
• The nest egg went from R$12 billion to R$11.5 billion.

Most of the cuts were made to allow for the expansion of parliamentary amendments next year. The amendments are part of the budget, the distribution of which is chosen by parliamentarians. Of the 61.1 billion reais that will be changed next year, 49.9 billion reais are mandatory, that is, they must be paid by the government. Of this total:

• 26.6 billion BRL consists of individual amendments, shared by all deputies and senators;
• 11.2 billion reais in state amendments; And
• 12.1 billion BRL in amendments from the standing committee of the House and Senate.

The remaining 11.5 billion reais were included in the ministries’ expenditures through amendments from the House and committees and will be under the control of the government. The Executive Branch is not obligated to execute these resources, but they are often used for political negotiations.

The report also refers to the decision of the Federal Court, which imposed limits on the growth of spending on parliamentary amendments. The interpretation adopted is that the budget can be approved with the expected values, with the execution phase responsible for making expenditures compatible with the expenditure ceiling and the budgetary target, if necessary.

The approved budget projects a surplus of 34.5 billion reais in government accounts. To achieve this value, the text integrates collection measures approved by the Legislature, such as the taxation of betting, fintechs and interest on equity (JCP), in addition to the linear reduction in tax incentives. There is also an increase in import taxes that has yet to be implemented.

According to the budgetary framework, there is a tolerance interval of 0.25 percentage points from the central objective. In other words, the objective will be considered achieved if the government ends a year with a zero balance.