Latest scandal forces Bolsonaro into unfamiliar territory

Trailing far behind in the polls, President Jair Bolsonaro had a straightforward game plan for the presidential campaign. 

By holding the strings of the public purse, Mr. Bolsonaro is trying to get Congress to allow him to poke massive holes in the federal spending cap (a mechanism created in 2016 as a line of defense against overspending, but which has turned into a fiscal version of France’s failed Maginot Line).

With permission to spend at will, the president hopes to increase payments of his flagship cash-transfer program by 50 percent, offer financial aid for truck drivers, and to subsidize purchases of cooking gas. 

The president has a race against the clock to create economic feel-good factors, an order that is getting taller by the week. The Brazilian economy is only creating jobs that pay less and less. Inflation continues in the double digits. And...