PEC 241 [Proposal of Constitutional Amendment] and PLP 257 [Bill Proposal] will cut thousands off the Health and Education to give it to bankers and international usurers.
By Editorial Team of Opinião Socialista.
While we were closing this issue, the government was preparing to send to the National Congress two measures that represent a harsh attack to the workers, the population and the public services in general.
In case they are approved [by the moment we translate this article, both measures have been pre-approved in the Low Chamber], the PEC 241 and the PLP 257 will freeze and untie the public costs for 20 years, cut rights and lower the salaries of public workers, and shut public tenders. The result is catastrophic: less budget for Health, Education, and all other vital services already auctioned and abandoned.
Some of these measures come from Dilma’s administration, and some others were planned now. The goal is the same: to continue and deepen the tax adjustment imposed by Dilma and followed by Temer, cutting thousands of millions of the public services to guarantee the payment of the debt to the bankers.
PEC 241: The costs’ ceiling
Known as “the costs’ ceiling PEC”, the PEC 241 will impose a limit to the government expenditures. To it, it establishes what is called the “New Tax Regime”, whose validity will be 20 years: it freezes the limit of the government public costs to the previous year plus the inflation rate.
This means the expenditures for the next 20 years will be the same as in 2016. ‘So it will all remain the same, right?’ No, not at all. If the public services are a chaos already because of the tax adjustment initiated during Dilma’s government, imagine what it will be like over the next years. The increase and ageing of the population, for example, demand more resources for health and education just to keep the current deplorable level.
With the PEC 241 and the untying of these resources to the Constitutional minimum, the services will collapse. A research of the Dieese [Inter Trade Union Department of Statistics and Socio-Economic Studies] shows that, if this were to be voted in 2003, Health would have lost R$260.000 millions, and Education would have counted with R$377.000 millions less.
The PEC 241 can still open space to revise the regulation that currently determines the minimum salary re-adjustment -which is already low- and guarantees the current miserable salary of R$840 [US$262] (currently, the minimum is re-adjusted considering the GDP increase of two years before, plus the inflation rate). With this change, the social security ‘benefits’, like retirement and pensions, will also be affected.
The government continues to affirm this change will not represent the reduction of Health and Education budgets, but that is a huge lie. The whole project was elaborated precisely for that. The intention is to make permanent the tax adjustment initiated by Dilma. A strong attack that aims to dismantle the little social security we currently have in Brazil.
Did you feel the lack of something, regarding public costs? Well, yes: the public debt, currently consuming almost half of the National Budget, has no limitation. In fact, all of this is exactly to keep paying the bankers as an absolute priority.
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Originally published in Opinião Socialista N 526.
Translation: Sofia Ballack.
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On Temer’s dining table, health and education are served
We need a general strike to defeat the PEC 241 and the pension and labour reforms
On the menu, meat with risotto ai funghi, salmon and salad. The main dish, however, was the budget of Health, Education and the most basic public services, offered on a plate to be feasted upon by the politicians and businessmen.
Of all efforts by the Temer government to approve the PEC 241, which freezes all public expenses and in practice cuts billions of social services, the most illustrative was the exquisite dinner offered on the night of Sunday, October 9, at the Palácio da Alvorada [Palace of the Dawn] -presidential residence-.
The luxurious dinner was offered by Temer to around 400 MPs of his base, to organize the approval of the PEC [Proposal of Constitutional Amendment] for this Monday. Some 200 were present. The government needs the votes of 308 MPs to change the Constitution and make the fiscal adjustment permanent for the next 20 years before the text goes on to the Senate. The amendment intends to perpetuate the brutal fiscal adjustment that Dilma began.
Aside from the MPs of Temer’s base, some others enjoyed the free food (free for them, since we paid for it): the president of the Fiesp [Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo], Paulo Skaf, and the ex-convict Roberto Jefferson, the pivot of the Mensalão crisis of 2006, considered the “star” of the night.
Temer did what he does best: lying, lying and lying. “We are cutting deep with this proposal, and each and any movement or corporative action which may stain the measure of ceiling to the public expenses cannot be accepted”, he said to the “select” audience. The amendment does cut deep but only on the flesh of the working class and of the vast majority of the population, by taking billions off Health and Education along the next years. All of this just to give more to the bankers, through the public debt.
Aside from the feast on the Palace, Temer government is making propaganda on TV and newspapers to try to convince the population that the PEC is necessary to “balance” the budget. A lie which has cost something close to R$20 million to a government that says it is “broke”.
They have some nerve
The Proposal for Constitutional Amendment 241 imposes a ceiling to the public spending (they can rise the budget more than the previous year), untying the budget for Health and Education but establishing no ceiling for the payment of the public debt. Such is the exact goal: to divert even more money from social areas to the bankers. The argument that the PEC is the “salvation” of the economy is extremely cynical.
We must unify the struggles and movements throughout the country to immediately prepare a general strike against the PEC of the bankers, and against the other attacks Temer throws at the workers and the people, like the Pension and Labour reforms.
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Translation: Gabriel Tolstoy
