Welfare Reform Scheduled for First Round Full Senate Vote This Tuesday

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Welfare reform playbook will have a decisive chapter this week. The first round of voting on the Proposed Constitutional Amendment (PEC) for welfare reform is scheduled for next Tuesday, September 24th, in the Senate plenary session. According to legislators, the climate is favorable to its approval.

Simone Tebet, the Chair of the Committee on Constitution and Justice (CCJ), said that the Social Welfare reform is “bulletproof”. In the morning, the CCJ will be voting on the report on the amendments received from individual legislators. Later, the PEC will be voted in the full session. The calendar is expected to include a second-round vote on October 10th.

“Next week, we will start voting in the second round. On October 10th, we will be able to deliver the Social Welfare reform to Brazil,” said Tebet.

In the reform’s first passage through the CCJ, the PEC’s rapporteur, Senator Tasso Jereissati, read and submitted his opinion to the committee, which was approved by 18 votes to seven and then sent to the full Senate. Five plenary sessions were held to discuss the topic.

Not all sessions reserved for the reform had a quorum. Few senators asked to speak in some of them. Deputy Paulo Paim called for changes in the special retirement rules for occupations that are detrimental to health and changes in the rules of pension by death.

In his report, regarding the plenary amendments, Jereissati rejected 76 amendments received in the Senate that could change the proposal and force the return of the text to scrutiny by deputies. The rapporteur, however, changed the wording on the point that deals with the introduction of a lower contribution rate for informal workers.

Aware that the rapporteur will not make changes that will lead to the return of the text to the Chamber, some senators are hedging their bets and placing their chips on the so-called Parallel PEC. The Parallel PEC promises to provide more beneficial rules for workers and was designed to avoid changes in the principal PEC and, consequently, enable its approval in October.

Jereissati and Tebet expect that there will be a 15-day difference between the votes on the original PEC and the parallel PEC votes. However, in the latter case, final approval will still take time, since it will need to be considered and voted upon by the Chamber of Deputies.

Source: Agência Brasil