(Agencia CMA Latam) - Brazilian President Michel Temer invited ministers and leaders from allied parties to a meeting on Sunday aimed at gauging how many votes the government would have in its bid to pass a pension reform bill, according to Agencia Brasil, the Brazilian official news agency.
The meeting is expected to take place in the official residence of Rodrigo Maia, Brazil's House of Representatives' speaker. It would also serve as a way to convince hesitant Congress members to support the pension reform.
Maia reaffirmed that the government is still far from the 308 votes needed to approve the bill. "If I do not have enough votes, we will not set a vote date," he told reporters in São Paulo, according to the "Folha de S. Paulo" newspaper.
The government wanted Maia to submit the pension reform bill to a House floor vote this coming week, but it postponed the expected voting date for at least a week.
Maia also stressed that support from the PSDB - a party expected to leave the ruling coalition soon - is vital to move forward with the pension reform legislation, but noted it would be difficult to accept any demand from PSDB to change the bill.
The party's demands, according to a government estimate, would reduce to less than half the public spending cuts expected with the reform. Currently, with the concessions already made, the government's planned spending cut is around 60% of that estimated initially (R$ 793 billion in ten years).
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