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Comment by masklinn | Hacker News Reader

> What kind of insanity leads to this? The government is prohibited from creating software that helps its citizens?

"Lobbying" and "campaign contributions", aka paying congresspeople aka straight up corruption but you can't use the C word in US politics.

H&R Block and Intuit have been greasing palms for years to keep the agreement in place and encode it in law: https://www.propublica.org/article/congress-is-about-to-ban-...

> Those efforts have been fueled by hefty lobbying spending and campaign contributions by the industry. Intuit and H&R Block last year poured a combined $6.6 million into lobbying related to the IRS filing deal and other issues. Neal, who became Ways and Means chair this year after Democrats took control of the House, received $16,000 in contributions from Intuit and H&R Block in the last two election cycles.

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While I agree there is a money problem, it's not quite so simple as just "paying people off". The money goes to their campaign funds which I'm sure get abused sometimes, but they also get called out and prosecuted for it. Additionally, money donated directly to the politician's fund is limited. Money paid to a PAC is very much separated from the politician. They can't so much as coordinate with the PAC.

So it's more about having money to get reelected than a simple personal bribe.

> While I agree there is a money problem, it's not quite so simple as just "paying people off".

Sure, it's paying people off with more steps, and keeping them when they are so they keep providing the services you paid them for.

> Money paid to a PAC is very much separated from the politician. They can't so much as coordinate with the PAC.

They can't so much as explicitly and officially coordinate with PACs. I'm sure a second of thinking will reveal the flaw.

> So it's more about having money to get reelected than a simple personal bribe.

You're the one talking about personal bribes. And I still fail to see how the fig leaf of "campaign donations" is anything more than a bribe with more steps. “Oh they’re not getting money they’re getting the means to make money”.

> So it's more about having money to get reelected than a simple personal bribe.

I think that's a distinction without much of a difference.

> They can't so much as coordinate with the PAC.

There were whole weeks of "The Colbert Report" where Colbert and Jon Stewart legally set up a super PAC for colbert to run for "president of South Carolina" where they exploited every bit of the super PAC legislation just to show how easy it is and what kind of legal things people can do with the money. The "you cannot coordinate" part was hilariously easy to get around.

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