Gastos públicos e as relações de poder financeiro na Federação brasileira: inconstitucionalidade dos projetos federais custeados com os orçamentos subnacionais

Abstract

This work focuses on public expenditure of administrative execution by States, Federal District and Municipalities, determined by normative acts issued by the Brazilian National Congress. It begins by laying out theoretical foundations about Brazilian financial federalism, the system of division of financial power vertically and horizontally considered, to reveal the existence of a transversal power relationship between the Federal Legislative Power and subcentral Governments, with specific characteristics. It presents a proposal for a logical structure of the public expenditure norm of administrative execution, and presents the legislative competence of the Federal Union in matters of Financial Law and public spending. Then, a case study is carried out, with examples of federal regulations (policy-decision making) that constrain the subcentral Governments’ budget, in matter of public expenditure (policy-making). It is concluded, among other aspects, that the federal Legislative Power edits repeatedly normatively imbalanced acts in the regulation of federative reciprocal obligations, in violation of the cooperative dimension of the Brazilian federalism, constitutional principle. Three alternatives are exposed to solve this structural unconstitutionality of the federal acts: two of them of a legal nature, the first of jurisdictional competence and the second of legislative competence, and the third of a political nature, which would also require a constitutional reform. Finally, a main conclusion is exposed.