One day after saying that he will respect the spending ceiling, President Jair Bolsonaro (without a party) said on Thursday that the government did discuss breaking the spending limit and concluded: "we debate, what's the problem?"
"During the pandemic we have the PEC of War, we have already broken the ceiling by R$ 700 billion," declared Bolsonaro during his weekly social media live.
"I always say that the economy is 99.9% with Paulo Guedes. I have to have 0.1% of the veto power. The ceiling is the ceiling, right? The floor rises annually, and you have less resources to do something," he said.
The president then said that his assistants asked him if it was possible to extrapolate the ceiling by "another R$ 20 billion." "I said: 'what is the justification? If it is for viruses, there is no problem'".
Bolsonaro committed publicly on Wednesday night (12) to the spending ceiling - a constitutional provision that limits federal government expenses to those made in the previous year, adjusted for inflation.
Translated by Kiratiana Freelon