http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/world/americas/amid-slump-brazil-congress-seeks-raise-.html 2014-11-29 22:44:13 Amid Slump, Brazil Congress Seeks Raise Seizing on a generally sleepy time in Brazil, congressional leaders in the capital, Brasília, are pushing ahead with legislation to raise their own salaries as much as 34 percent. === RIO DE JANEIRO — After a How has Brazil’s Congress reacted to this shift? By moving swiftly to grant itself a whopping pay raise. Seizing on a generally sleepy time in Brazil when many people are preparing to wind down the year and go on vacation during the Southern Hemisphere’s summer, congressional leaders in the capital, Brasília, are pushing ahead with legislation to raise their own salaries as much as 34 percent, to about $187,000 a year. “There must be a raise,” Henrique Eduardo Alves, a congressman from the state of Rio Grande do Norte who is speaker of the lower house, told reporters. “This is constitutional. The last raise was four years ago.” In addition to lavishing more pay on a Congress that already ranks among the most The raise would catapult the base compensation of Brazilian members of Congress past that of their A public opinion survey this year by Datafolha, a Brazilian polling company, showed approval of Brazil’s Congress at just 14 percent, with 20 percent of respondents saying Brazil’s government should have the right to shut down Congress. The survey, conducted in February with interviews of 2,614 people, had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus two percentage points. Scandals over Then there is the raise, which would take legislative pay to $187,000 in a country where gross national income per capita is about $11,690 a year. Congress’s move to raise salaries beyond those paid to legislators in richer countries has raised doubts about whether Brazil can rein in spending. “The executive branch is finally promising to get the train back on the tracks, and the legislative branch starts to derail things,” said Gil Castello Branco, director of In addition to their salaries, members of Brazil’s Congress also get