By Martha Beck and Barbara Nascimento | Updated on Jun 11, 2026 at 08:11 PM
Brazil’s economic team is seeking to negotiate with Congress to prevent final approval of three bills that would add more than 170 billion reais ($33 billion) to the nation’s budget over the next 10 years, Planning Minister Bruno Moretti said.
Moretti said the government bets on dialogue to explain to lawmakers the impact the proposals would have on the nation’s budget, but is prepared to appeal to the Supreme Court if negotiations fail. The bills, which were approved by different Senate committees Wednesday afternoon, lack funding sources and would threaten fiscal rules.
“It is important not to create uncertainty in an environment where the economy is already facing exogenous shocks,” Moretti said in an interview Thursday. “We need to maintain discipline in the management of public finances.”
One bill would renegotiate rural debt at subsidized interest rates, with an estimated impact of 140 billion reais over 10 years. Another would ease retirement rules for community health workers, costing about 30 billion reais over the same period. A third would raise the national wage floor for physicians and dentists, adding roughly 8 billion reais in annual spending starting this year.
In addition, more than 10 different proposals are under consideration in the Senate, with the potential to raise constitutional spending floors or create new mandatory expenditures, he warned.
The government has spent the past weeks meeting with lawmakers in an effort to limit the fiscal impact of a series of proposals moving through Congress, at a time when President Luiz Inácio Lujla da Silva is trying to preserve the government limited fiscal space to fund existing social programs and other economic stimulus measures ahead of the October election.
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Moretti, who took over the Planning Ministry in March after his predecessor stepped down to run in this year’s elections, said the bills would also damage investor perceptions of Latin America’s largest economy and possibly force the government to make deeper budget freezes.
While acknowledging that the government needs to help farmers, Moretti argued that the current rural-debt proposal would force banks to set aside additional provisions for potential losses, weighing on their balance sheets. It could also increase delinquency rates across the financial system, he said.
The minister did not rule out appealing to the top court if the measures advance without meeting fiscal requirements. He noted that justices have supported the government in similar cases.
“There are legal conditions requiring mandatory expenditures to be accompanied by funding sources,” he said.