The redesign of budget institutions and the explosion of rapporteur-general amendments RP-9: the budget process at the heart of the political crisis

Abstract

This article discusses the redesign of budgetary rules that led to the explosion of the rapporteur-general´s amendments and led to a reconfiguration of the balance of forces between the Executive and the Legislature in the Brazilian budgetary framework. Its main objective is to investigate the budgetary gear that allowed to assign to such amendments the contours they have today, decomposing the elements that integrate this operative mechanics, their causes and consequences. The intensive modification of the legal contours of the budgetary allocation process established in the Political Charter of 1988, arising from the conjunction of three major flows of normative changes (regimental, infra-constitutional and constitutional), requires and demands systematic studies that contribute to the expansion of the understanding of such phenomena that directly affect the functioning of Brazilian democratic institutions. This, too, is one of the purposes of the article. The research methodology is qualitative, based on the extensive documentation of the processing of annual budget bills and budget guidelines bills available on the websites of the Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Senate. In addition, the rules of the National Congress that regulate the operation of the Joint Commission on Public Budget are used and, in a complementary way, data available in the Integrated Planning and Budget System are used.