Banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO: AMS MARQUES CAVALCANTE

THE DISMANTLING OF SOCIAL ASSISTANCE POLICY: A REFLECTION FROM THE CUTTING OF THE BRAZILIAN STATE'S SPENDING CAP

Keywords: Social Assistance; Social Policy; Public Fund; Defunding, Budget.

SUMMARY

This dissertation, resulting from bibliographical and documentary research, aims to analyze how the Social Assistance Policy has been configured in Brazil in the face of constant attacks on the budget of the social policies that make up social security, most notably from the approval of Constitutional Amendment 95/2016. To this end, it was necessary to understand the relationship between the State, the crisis of capital and neoliberalism, and how they impact the conduct of social policies today. Thus, it is assumed that the strategies used by capital to cushion the impacts of the structural crisis demonstrate a constant targeting of public funds to meet the demands of capital, constituting a fundamental mechanism for the development of capitalist accumulation. Composed of resources coming from the working class, the public fund has mechanisms for capturing resources, which currently has occurred due to the dismantling of social rights and the financialization of Social Security. It is evident that one of the ways in which social security is dismantled occurs through the transfer of resources, which would be destined for these policies, to the fiscal budget, composing the primary surplus. Following the approval of Constitutional Amendment 95/2016, the process of dismantling social policies has intensified, such as the Social Assistance Policy, as it proposes the freezing of social spending for twenty years. By investigating the effects of EC 95/2016 on the Social Assistance Policy, the research demonstrated that the constant defunding of this policy has had devastating impacts on the functioning of the Unified Social Assistance System (SUAS), setting precedents for the unpredictability in ensuring the supply of social assistance services. It was therefore found that the defunding of PAS was carried out through the adoption of specific programs, which mischaracterize it as a social right, due to the need to cut expenses imposed by fiscal adjustment, which favors the demands and trends of capitalist development. in crisis in Brazil.