President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has reached the first 100 days of his third mandate having kept his promise to reactivate social programs mainly focused on the poorest, but with his eyes already focused on a layer of the population most resistant to his government, the middle class.
Speaking at a ministerial meeting to mark the date on Monday, the president highlighted, as always, the need to govern for the neediest, but he also called for the advancement of programs more aimed at the middle class – although he did not announce new measures and assuming the government has limited funds for everything it needs to do.
Lula highlighted the Desenrola program, an electoral promise to relieve the debts of the population with lower incomes, but still above the strata served by social programs such as Bolsa Família, and spoke of rekindling the higher levels of the Minha Casa program, MinhaVida.
Lula told Cities Minister Jader Filho that he does not know if it will be possible to reach the 2 million contracted homes in this mandate, as proposed by the ministry, but he has asked that part of this be for those with slightly higher incomes.
“We must think, in Minha Casa, in Minha Vida, of those who earn two, three, four minimum salaries,” said the president, also underlining that the priority continues to be the lowest class.
He asked the Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad, to “develop soon”, the Desenrola program for the moment stuck between technical difficulties and lack of definitions with the private sector.
The assessment of advisers close to the president is that the government needs to win back part of the middle class, especially that which rose to class C during the first terms of the PT, but lost a large part of its income in the following years.
“It is a part of the population that has needs that need to be met. Even if they are not as urgent as those of the poorest, they are areas where the government can help,” one of the government ministers told Reuters.
The attention given in these first 100 days –increase the Bolsa Família program, resume Mais Médicos and Minha Casa, Minha Vida in band 1, which had ceased to exist– does not reach this population with a higher income. The bet now is to stimulate job creation and access to credit to grow the economy.
“My obsession now is to create jobs,” Lula told his ministers.
BETTING
Also on the radar are the additional adjustment to the minimum wage – for which the government is discussing a new policy – and the widening of the income tax exemption range, corrected this year but still below the intentions of the government. president.
In the measures for this sector, the government also takes into account the basic salary for nurses, which will remain outside the fiscal framework; the rebalancing of civil servants and the Litigio Zero programme, which opened a cycle of renegotiation of the debts of natural persons and small, medium and large enterprises with the Revenue Agency.
Also included in this bill is the readjustment of Capes and CNPQ research grants by 40% after six years without increases.
Even in the countryside, the government is targeting medium and small producers, who are not served by agri-food export credit mechanisms, nor by the benefits granted to peasant families. As Reuters has shown, the idea is to reserve part of the Safra plan, with minor interests, for that segment of producers dedicated to growing food, to improve production and vineyard area.
Credit and job creation, as well as social programs, were the main drivers that, in Lula’s first terms, managed to bring part of class D to class C: an increase of 40 million people, according to the study conducted at the time by the economist of the Getulio Vargas Foundation Marcelo Néri.
Part of those who have risen have not resisted the subsequent years of crisis and, today, it is in this segment that the greatest grudge against the government is found. According to the latest Datafolha poll, 36% of people with household incomes between two and five minimum wages disapprove of the president, while the index rises to 47% in the range between five and ten minimum wages. it was 29%.
Source: Terra
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