Brazil's Chamber of Deputies Allocated R$1.3 Billion in Committee Amendments Without Identifying Authors
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A study by Transparência Brasil has revealed that in 2025, the Chamber of Deputies registered R$1.3 billion in committee amendments attributed to party leaders, without specifying the individual lawmakers who directed these funds. This amount represents 16% of all committee indications made by the Chamber that year and mirrors the practices of the now-defunct "secret budget" system. While functionally similar to the previous opaque system, the allocation of committee amendments by party leaders is permitted under complementary law 210, passed in 2025 following a Supreme Court suspension of amendments due to transparency concerns. The investigation identified 1,341 such indications linked solely to the leadership of seven parties: PP, União Brasil, PL, Republicanos, Avante, Podemos, and Solidariedade. Public records from the Chamber only list the party leadership as the author, omitting the specific deputies who decided the final recipients of the funds. The Progressistas and União Brasil federation was the largest user of this mechanism, termed "leadership amendments" by the NGO, with R$716.7 million allocated, followed by PL (R$254.3 million) and Republicanos (R$218.5 million). These four parties accounted for nearly 95% of the identified total. The report suggests that the listed party leaders may not have been the sole decision-makers, as individual amendments registered under their names were exclusively directed to beneficiaries within their home states. In contrast, amendments attributed to leadership showed a broader distribution across states, indicating that multiple, uncredited deputies likely chose the beneficiaries, a pattern reminiscent of the "secret budget." For instance, over half of the R$427.7 million attributed to Dr. Luizinho (PP-RJ) went to Piauí, not his home state of Rio de Janeiro. Transparência Brasil also highlighted a lack of traceability, noting that R$821 million in committee amendments could not have their final beneficiaries identified due to the absence of a unique identifier to track each allocation through its execution.
The allocation of R$1.3 billion in committee amendments without explicit author identification raises significant governance and accountability questions. This practice, even if legally permissible under current legislation, replicates the opacity of the former "secret budget," potentially undermining public trust and the principle of legislative transparency. The distribution patterns suggest that while formal authorship is vested in party leadership, the actual decision-making power may be diffused among multiple, unidentified deputies. This diffusion, while possibly facilitating broader representation, creates a challenge for oversight and for constituents seeking to understand how public funds are directed. Future legislative reforms could explore mechanisms for enhanced traceability and disclosure, such as unique amendment identifiers or tiered disclosure requirements, to balance the need for legislative flexibility with the public's right to information and accountability, particularly in the context of increasing digital governance capabilities.
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