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Comment by IncreasePosts | Hacker News Reader

I think it speaks to doing things "the right way". Direct file could have been mandated by Congress, but it wasn't. Instead it only directed the IRS to do a "study" as a "voluntary agency initiative". That left full control of whether it should be done in the hands of the IRS and the executive branch.

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> Direct file could have been mandated by Congress, but it wasn't.

Something being mandated by Congress is no protection at times:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Agency_for_Inter...

(Or the Constitution for that matter it seems.)

More concretely and timely for this discussion - the beneficial ownership registry was passed in the 2021 NDAA by congress and signed by Biden. So there's a law on the books that FinCEN needs to collect the ownership data for all US companies to prevent money laundering.

This week, Bessent decided that the signature policy of the Corporate Transparency Act, a bipartisan effort to stymie cartels and foreign oligarchs, would not only be stopped, but they instructed FinCEN to delete all the records they've already collected.

Easily the most lawless gang of corrupt bureaucrats that have ever held office in the US.

https://thehill.com/business/6025347-treasury-repeals-benefi...

Not a funding issue per se, but Congress also passed a law requiring that the "Epstein files" be released by December 2025. Yet here we are, ~9 months later, and the Republican administration is still violating the law's deadline and its requirements not to black out the names of people who aren't trafficking-victims.

Meanwhile, Republican legislators are looking at the people responsible and *checks notes* ... rewarding them with powerful government jobs. [0]

[0] https://www.citizen.org/article/todd-blanche-the-epstein-fil...

Yeah that would have protected it /s

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