Impacts of the post-2015 fiscal adjustment on the financing of the Social Assistance Policy in Brazil

Abstract

The capitalist crisis in the world intensified after the 2007-2008 crash and, particularly, in Brazil, it had significant expression after 2015. In response to this economic situation, the federal government introduced austere fiscal adjustment measures, notably, through of Constitutional Amendment n.95/2016 which freezes public spending for twenty years, intensifying attacks on social policies, especially in the area of ​​Social Assistance. In this perspective, the introduction of this New Fiscal Regime has expanded the process of strangling the Public Budget and making the contribution of constitutionally linked resources more flexible. Therefore, this article aims to analyze the main consequences of the post-2015 fiscal adjustment intensification process on the financing structure of the Social Assistance policy in Brazil. Through an essay with a historical-critical approach, budget information from Portal Siga Brasil was used, from 2004 to 2019, to analyze the composition of federal spending, funding sources and indirect funding of the Social Assistance budget source, as well as the magnitude of the tax expenditure of this policy. Data analysis allowed us to observe a clear pressure, from 2015 onwards, for a significant reduction in the magnitude of expenditures, characterizing the cooling of the expansionary cycle of Social Assistance (from 2004 to 2014), and presenting a profoundly unstable scenario regarding the capacity of the tax collection finance its actions in the coming years.