Despite the Supreme Court (STF) ruling that declared the general rapporteur’s amendments (RP 9) unconstitutional, the “secret budget” persists in Brazil through other types of parliamentary amendments.

The mechanism has come to operate through Pix amendments and committee amendments, moving billions of reais without transparency, away from the eyes of society and the control bodies. Both types of amendments are approved, for the most part, without sufficient detail on the destination and object of application, which makes them incompatible with art. 166, §3, I of the Federal Constitution.

• The amounts earmarked through the Pix amendments went from R$3 billion in 2022 to R$7 billion in 2023. The total earmarked for them in 2024 is R$8 billion;
• Commission amendments were increased with the reallocation of resources authorized through Constitutional Amendment No. 126/2022, causing commission amendments to jump from R$329 million in 2022 to R$6.9 billion in 2023;
• Both Pix and committee amendments have a high risk of deepening inequalities, rather than reducing them, since they are earmarked for the electoral strongholds of parliamentarians, rather than by technical criteria;
• TB believes that there is a need for a legal and regulatory framework that imposes clear criteria for the allocation of amendments, guaranteeing their compatibility with planning, transparency and traceability policies.