Abstract
The Brazilian proposal for the implementation of the federal public spending ceiling, object of the Constitutional Amendment Proposals (PECs) 241/55, was approved on December 16, 2016, being consolidated into Constitutional Amendment number 95, which established a new fiscal regime to be in force over the next 20 (twenty) years, thus, being valid until 2036. Such proposal was the subject of intense protests by the civil society, being the cause of strikes and students' occupations that took place in public schools and universities throughout the country, which did not prevent, however, its approval, since it was not an initiative measure by a government concerned with its popularity and legitimacy. Besides the absence of dialogue with civil society, the protests were motivated by the opposition to an official fallacious discourse on the need for a new fiscal regime, by limiting public spending and investment, especially on services with a social nature, as the only measure capable of recovering the economic growth, which would have collapsed before an alleged irresponsible fiscal behavior of the previous government. Aiming to analyze that official discourse, and the impacts of the new Constitutional Amendment (CA) 95/2016, this article, by using a qualitative and exploratory methodology, shall focus on the content of the Amendment and the message of the original proposals, so that, at the end, one concludes that such measure is yet another attempt by the national and supranational capital powers, to keep Brazil in its permanent State of Economic Exception, in which some also desire to keep, in fact, all Latin America.
Keywords:
public spending ceiling; Constitutional Amendment 95/2016; State of Economic Exception; neoliberalism and colonialism; disaster capitalism