Brazil keen on moving fiscal goalposts

The House this week surreptitiously approved a major change to Brazil’s fiscal framework, which will allow the Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva administration to spend an additional BRL 15.7 billion (USD 3.05 billion) this year. The bill now goes to the Senate.

The move was supported by “Big Center” parties and part of the opposition, as some of the funds will go towards lawmaker-appointed budgetary earmarks for city governments, directly influencing the upcoming mayoral elections to be held in October. Banks and fiscal watchdog groups criticized the move, warning that moving the fiscal goalposts erodes trust in Brazil’s economic outlook.

The change to the fiscal framework was inserted as an amendment in a completely unrelated bill reinstating a federal insurance policy for victims of traffic accidents. Congressman Rubens Pereira Júnior, one of the government’s deputy whips, presented his report to the House floor less than 40 minutes before the vote, leaving little room for discussion. The change was not previously discussed in committees.

In Brazil, wildly unrelated riders inserted into bills are known as “jabutis,” or tortoises. The term reportedly comes from a quote attributed to the notable late Brazilian politician Ulysses Guimarães: “tortoises don’t climb trees,” meaning that if you see a tortoise in a tree, someone must have put it there.

In 2016, the Supreme Court declared that the practice of shoehorning...