“I have never accepted putting the responsibility for the deficit on social security. I never have and I never will.” Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said that on Thursday, a month before the presidential election, at an event where his government announced that a long queue of pension claims had been cleared.
Lula blamed interest payments instead. “The deficit exists because we have to pay R$1.3 trillion in interest every year,” he said. If revenue and spending are mismatched, he added, the government can discuss it and fix it, “but you can’t put the responsibility on social security.”
The backlog numbers
Pending applications for pensions and social-assistance benefits at the INSS, the social security agency, fell to 1.252 million at the end of August. That is the lowest figure since Lula returned to office in 2023. In February the queue hit a record 3.128 million, and officials worried that long waits could hurt his popularity.
The government now calls the backlog “eliminated.” Its reasoning is simple: the agency receives 1.2 million to 1.3 million applications a month, and fewer people are now waiting than that. “What used to be a backlog becomes a normal flow of applications, and that happened in August this year,” Social Security Minister Wolney Queiroz said. The government had expected to get there only at the end of September.
Lula had ordered officials to cut the queue before the October election. They hired new staff, used telemedicine in regions short of doctors, held weekend processing drives and kept paying bonuses to employees who handle extra cases. Rules for temporary disability benefits changed too, so some applications can be assessed from documents without an in-person medical exam.
Average processing time dropped from 59 days in February to 34 days in August. The legal deadline is up to 45 days. Still, just over 200,000 applications have waited longer than that, most of them for the means-tested benefit for low-income elderly people and people with disabilities, known as BPC, because those cases need an in-person medical exam and a biopsychosocial assessment.
Chief of Staff Miriam Belchior said the job was not finished. “We have to keep watching for any movement that causes applications to rise again,” she said.
Lula defends the benefits
Lula also defended minimum wage increases above inflation, which raise most social security payments, and the BPC, which some economists want reviewed. “What does giving a 3% real increase to the lowest wage in the country amount to?” he asked. Under current rules the minimum wage can rise by up to 2.5% a year above inflation.
On the BPC, he said eligibility rules exist and the state’s job is to apply them. “If they are entitled, we grant it. If they aren’t, we tell them they aren’t.”
“The blame always falls on the poorest,” Lula said. “Now the problem is supposedly this benefit, the Bolsa Familia cash-transfer program and social security.” He conceded there are “plenty of scammers trying to find a way to get money.”
Also on Thursday, the Lower House and Senate approved an executive order expanding a benefits-management program, created in 2025 to reassess and review pension and social-assistance benefits. With both houses signing off, it can now be formally enacted.
