The standing committees of the House, Senate and Congress have gained the power to move more than the R$11.5 billion set aside for their amendments in the 2025 federal budget. This report reveals that the collegiate bodies will be able to direct another R$8.5 billion through “parallel” amendments, which are not identified as having been authored by the parliamentarians during the spending phase.

These amendments do not receive the code RP 8, as they should, but RP 2 and RP 3, which refer to discretionary spending by the federal government and government spending on the Growth Acceleration Program (PAC). The practice goes against the Federal Supreme Court’s transparency and traceability rulings on the subject and is yet another version of the secret budget.

Higher volume of committee amendments

• With the adoption of “parallel amendments”, the total volume of resources under the control of the committees reaches the highest level since 2020: R$20 billion. This is the first time the committees have adopted it;
• The majority (7.1 billion) of these amendments are directed towards generic actions. The final destination and what the funds will be spent on are only defined in the execution phase, when the committee chairs send letters to the ministries spreading the amounts to various beneficiaries, in a process that lacks transparency and coordination with federal planning.

• As these amendments do not receive the correct identifier, the funds could be mixed up with other federal government spending classified as RP 2 and RP 3;
• As a damage containment measure, the federal government has a duty to assign a unique identifier to “parallel” amendments. In addition, the Executive must give full transparency to the letters and communications from the commissions to the ministries responsible for executing the expenditure.