OPINION. Who's in charge of the economy?

On July 14th, the Senate approved by 73 to 1 a PEC that creates a special retirement for community health agents – R$ 27 billion over ten years – without indicating where the money comes from. The Finance Ministry spent months begging for the matter not to be on the agenda and threatened to go to the Supreme Court. It didn't work: it went to a vote because Davi Alcolumbre wanted it to.

Faria Lima, which considers itself the nervous center of the Brazilian economy, followed everything through the news. That's why I've been saying to every investor and executive I've met during the pre-campaign: you think you're the elite of the country, but those in charge in Brazil are in Piauí and Amapá. The same thing happened when the government wanted to increase the IOF.

Initially, Congress attended to Faria Lima's wishes and overturned the tax decrees; two days later, the government released R$ 474 million in amendments, of which R$ 20 million was just for Alcolumbre, and the fight ended. This is the true source of power: the North and Northeast – with 35% of the population – occupy 59% of the Senate and 42% of the Chamber, and almost all of these mandates rely on clientelism.

While the financial market was wasting time with these guys, on the other side of the Pinheiros river, a group of obstinate idealists built an alternative. We founded the Missão Party, which chose me as its presidential candidate. Our agenda starts from a premise: the fiscal problem cannot be solved without solving the political problem.

The PT depends on assistance, while the right-wing of the Centrão depends on amendments to operate the purchase of votes in the backlands. Only those who don't owe the big shots can cut into their flesh. And time is running out. The gross debt is at 81.9% of GDP, interest consumed R$ 1.1 trillion in twelve months, and the nominal deficit reached 10% of GDP.

The consequence is already in sight: in June, the Treasury canceled an entire NTN-B auction, and in July it came back with a symbolic batch of 150,000 papers and didn't even sell that. If the trajectory continues, the Independent Fiscal Institution (IFI) projects the debt crossing 100% of GDP by 2030. To just stabilize it, a primary surplus of 2.1% of GDP would be needed.

The solution starts with the Fiscal Equilibrium PEC, filed by deputy Kim Kataguiri, which I will have approved during the transition: it deindexes Social Security and BPC from the minimum wage (today, every R$ 1 increase in the minimum wage costs R$ 429 million in mandatory spending), uncouples health and education floors from revenue, reviews the wage bonus, and cuts tax waivers, saving R$ 1.1 trillion over five years.

The main effect of this PEC will be to flatten the expenditure growth curve, which will once again be controlled by the spending ceiling. Furthermore, we will cut the super salaries and perks paid to more than 50,000 civil servants, which is equivalent to R$ 20 billion per year, and the tax privileges of companies and unproductive sectors.

This savings will go towards investment: slum clearance, infrastructure, transportation, and energy, expenses that generate long-term returns for our economy.

In parallel, comes our productivity agenda: automatic expiration for sectoral and geographical incentives, including sensitive ones like the Manaus Free Zone; end of union unicity; alternative regimes to the CLT and arbitration in labor relations. To increase the labor supply, we will make a major reform in assistance. Today, there are 19.1 million families in the Bolsa Família – one in every three households – and there are 2,639 cities and nine entire states with more families receiving benefits than workers with a signed contract.

The Citizens' Fronts will create an exit door from the program so that all beneficiaries in a condition to work can act in caretaker and urban infrastructure projects, receiving a salary and an opportunity for reintegration into the economy. By 2030, no state in Brazil will have more people dependent on the government than formal workers, returning around R$ 80 billion per year to the federal budget.

With these adjustments, we will seek a primary surplus and, subsequently, a nominal surplus. We will end the trajectory of debt growth and create conditions for the Central Bank to feel comfortable cutting interest rates without generating inflation. Thus, we will swap the rentier economy for an innovation economy, where investing in a company will once again be a better business than lending to the government.

The question remains: how to approve all this in a Congress controlled by the same clientelist elite that today sabotages growth? By changing incentives. Today, the total parliamentary amendments are a slice of the liquid current revenue: the more the government collects, the more Congress has to distribute. We will change this calculation basis to a percentage of the available discretionary spending below the ceiling: the more they cut, the more is left for amendments.

In the short term, this puts Congress on the side of adjustment. In the long term, it is economic growth and the formation of a middle class that will democratize power.

My proposals may sound like music to the ears of those who understand the real situation of our economy, but none of the other presidential candidates have the courage to defend them publicly. I return to the question in the title: who is in charge of the Brazilian economy? It's not the market, nor the voter. It's the politicians who dispatch from Macapá or Teresina, free to tax workers from Belo Horizonte or Florianópolis.

Our economic project is designed to reverse this arrangement. Only then will those who are genuinely interested in our growth be in charge in Brazil.