For the first time since taking office in 2019, President Jair Bolsonaro has been directly implicated in a corruption scandal. Last week, journalist Breno Pires revealed the government had created a “secret budget” that included BRL 3 billion (USD 565 million) in priority expenses for a select group of lawmakers, included by way of a little-understood mechanism known as “rapporteur-designated budgetary grants.”
But the Brazilian media has done a poor job of explaining exactly why Mr. Bolsonaro’s secret budget is illegal.
Rapporteur-designated budgetary grants are not new to Brazilian politics, first being used in 1946. Indeed, as political scientist...