Proponents of Brazilian Social Security Reform Defended Higher Expenditure in 2015

05/08/2017 - 12h05

"We all have fathers and mothers, elderly people. Many of those who hear me now, congressmen and congresswomen, know what this criminal proposal made by the government means to their parents. We shall vote in favor of the retired!"

The sentence, which was widely applauded by those attending the plenary sitting in the Brazilian House of Representatives in 2015, could have been said by any opponent of President Michel Temer's Social Security reform.

However, the person who said it was the proposal's current rapporteur, Federal Legislator Arthur Oliveira Maia (Popular Socialist Party ).

At the time Maia was a member of Solidariedade, a political party opposed to the government of then-president Dilma Rousseff (Workers' Party ).

He was one of the congressmen who helped to approve a new measure during the plenary sitting of May 16, 2015, which elasticized the so-called Social Security factor, increasing expenditure with public social security.

Maia said that the Rousseff administration's proposal was "a criminal perversity" and "a package of venom."

"It was certainly a mistake. However, I submitted the favorable provisional measures of Joaquim Levy [Rousseff's Finance Minster at the time]. Fiscal responsibility, always," says Rodrigo Maia, who voted in favor of Rousseff's proposals, but also voted for the cancellation of the Social Security factor.

All the PSDB (Brazilian Social Democracy Party) lawmakers, including the party's current leader in the House of Representatives, Ricardo Tripoli (SP), voted in favor of the Social Security factor flexibility, although the factor had been created by another member of the PSDB, former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

"The Social Security factor has always been important. The problem was that the Rousseff administration did not have credibility," says Tripoli, adding that he does not remember whether he voted in favor or against it.

The party disclosed a similar statement, in which its members say that they voted in favor of the amendment because the factor had exhausted its function.

The author of the alternative proposal at the time was Federal Legislator Arnaldo Faria de Sá (PTB-SP), who says that his colleagues' positions changed because the political scenario also changed. "What happened was a shift in the administration. The people who were in opposing parties at the time are now in favor of the current administration, that's all there is to it."

Folha tried to contact Arthur Maia directly and through his press office to hear his explanation on his change in position in recent days, but he did not answer.

Translated by THOMAS MUELLO

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