Lula brings back Bolsa Familia to replace Auxílio Brasil

On the last October 30th, Brazil witnessed the return of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to the Presidency of Brazil. Then, in the same week, the President-elect's team began the work of transition between governments with the news of the return of Bolsa Família. In this case, Lula is focused on replacing the budget that Bolsonaro made for 2023 to fund aid.

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Return of Bolsa Familia

The Bolsa Família program became one of the landmarks of the Lula and PT governments, which made the government of Jair Bolsonaro want to replace it, thus creating “Auxílio Brasil”. In addition, Bolsonaro also increased the face value of the income redistribution program to R$600.

According to Lula's transition team, the idea is to maintain the value of R$ 600 for families in situations of social vulnerability. However, there will be a redemption of the name of the previous program, Bolsa Família, and an additional amount of R$ 150 for families with children up to 6 years old.

Among the main reasons for the return of the Program is to make Bolsa Família once again fixed in Brazil. This is because Auxólio Brasil had an emergency character and was only scheduled until December 2022. Even President Jair Bolsonaro did not include it in the budget for 2023, although he mentioned that the program would continue the following year.

Lula tries to breach spending ceiling

Now, Lula's great challenge during the transition is precisely to find money to spend more than what was foreseen in the Budget Law. Thus, his team is already working for the 2023 Annual Budget Bill (PLOA) to be replaced, attributing urgency to spending more than was foreseen.

In this way, Lula hopes to guarantee his campaign promises, the main one being the guarantee of aid for the most needy. This is a great challenge, since the previous budget did not allow for the promotion of most of the expenses that the PT candidate intends to carry out.