A look at Lula’s Congress bucket list

The sun has set on the first six months of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s administration, and after a rocky start that included a seditious attack on the country’s capital, the government scored major victories in Congress this week — none greater than the approval of a tax reform proposal in the lower house.

While not the author of the reform’s key points, the Lula administration has made it one of its top agenda items, lobbying hard for it both publicly and in the back rooms of Congress. It also opened the money floodgates, signing off on billions in budgetary grants for lawmakers.

The reform’s passage was arguably the most consequential congressional achievement of the year’s first six months. But thanks to the heavy use of pork, the government also managed to pass, in the final days of the congressional semester, a key bill to increase federal revenues.

As lawmakers prepare to go on recess on July 17, The Brazilian Report looks back at what the Lula administration has accomplished so far.

Fiscal framework

One of the Lula administration’s top priorities was to replace the 2016 spending cap with new fiscal rules to give the government more room to manage the federal budget. The Finance Ministry presented its ambitious proposal in March.

The bill was approved by the House in May with tighter restrictions than originally proposed. 

Senators then reversed some of those changes and sent the bill back to the House. But the framework’s rapporteur in the House, Congressman Cláudio Cajado, has already criticized the alterations. The House...