Resumo:
This dissertation presents a diagnosis of the impact of the state policies and changes for budget control in Brazil in order to produce surplus for the payment of the public debt and investments. They are changes introduced by reducing the state obligations towards social policies and reducing the conditions for the implementation of citizen rights by the state. It is a case study based on a qualitative research of secondary data from governmental sources and
institutions. The research analyses the factual elements of the performance of two different policies by the
Brazilian state from 1994 to the present days. The first policy is the Untying of Union Revenues (Desvinculação de Receitas da União) known as DRU, from constitutionally
defined resources, mainly those directed to social policies, in order to make more flexible the government budget surplus for the purpose of the payment of the public debt and for investments. Presently, the DRU takes 30 percent from the total state revenue from the resources allocated to social policies. Social policies in Brazil are constitutional rights for citizenship, and have a structural character in terms of wealth distribution. Therefore, the DRU reduces the state obligation to these rights. The second policy is the distribution of part of the revenues obtained by the national lotteries controlled by Caixa Economica Federal (a federal government bank). Its aim is to complement state resources in the social budgets and it operates as a complementary fund to enforce social policies in view of the constant increasing of demands. Although it is included
in the constitutional provisions for social expenses, it has not a structural imposing character of the state obligations to the citizen rights; it is conceived as a legal compensation
mechanism to relieve the needs of redistributive policies. It is contingent and the amount of resources may vary according to the economic situation.Both policies have been enforced by both more neoliberal governments and less liberal governments (those more concerned with social policies). Comparatively, in the last decades, the balance between the resources withdrawn by the DRU and the resources received from the lotteries is not favorable to social policies. This research demonstrates that these policies weakened the conditions for enforcing social rights as was originally defined by the Brazilian Constitution of 1988; it weakened the conditions for redistribution for a more comprehensive development.
