Brazil’s Bolsonaro Delivers Social Security Reform to Congress

By Lise Alves, Senior Contributing Reporter

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazil’s President, Jair Bolsonaro, delivered the new project for the country’s social security reform in Congress on Wednesday morning. The government estimates that the reform will allow for an economy of almost one trillion reais over the next ten years.

“Brazil can only move forward if we approve these reforms. Logically, this reform is not mine, it’s not Paulo Guedes’s. It’s from Brazil, from all of us. With this reform, we will take off,” said the President to packed room of lawmakers.

Bolsonaro is scheduled to speak on national radio and television networks on Wednesday night, to explain to the nation the importance of a remodeled social security system.

Among the details released today are changes in the special pensions of teachers, police officers, firefighters, rural workers and professionals working in ‘unsound’ environments. The reform for the military, a factor of tension between the Administration and the Armed Forces, will be presented in the next thirty days, according to officials.

The reform announced today must be voted in the Chamber of Deputies and then in the Senate. In the House, the proposal will first go through the Commission on Constitution and Justice (CCJ), then go to a special commission, before going to plenary. If passed in two rounds of voting by at least three-fifths of the deputies (308 votes), the reform goes to the Senate.

Chamber representatives are vowing to have the reform discussed and approved in the Lower House by the end of the first semester of 2019.

“This Social Security issue is far beyond (this) government. This is a project for Brazil. Brazil depends on this for its future, for its development and for the generation of jobs,” Representative Baleia Rossi, leader of the MDB party in the Chamber told journalists at the end of the morning.