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Comment by XorNot | Hacker News Reader

No, it's the IRS's budget.

The IRS cannot spend money on things it's not budgeted for. Did you know the IRS returns $7 in additional taxes for every $1 in fraud prevention funding it gets at the moment?

Literally, a 700% return on investment, yet when was the last time any budget passed by congress raised funding the IRS to hire more auditors?

EDIT: Or let's take the articles conclusion: yes, obviously the government agencies should do better. So naturally we can conclude that the Republicans championing this investigation will be pushing through legislation mandating and funding appropriate upgrades - after all it seems like the inquiry has revealed serious issues which require some dedicated staffing and finance to sort out for a very important agency of the government.

Of course obviously that actually means this will never happen.

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Well they did spend 1.8 billion on IT last year. Invariably every government agency says it needs more money when something goes wrong. I don't think its unreasonable to think that the IRS should be able to at least store email for $1.8B. The real question is what did they get for $1.8B.

Perhaps some Canadian software company revamped their e-file system ... you've got to compete with healthcare.gov right?

The federal budget is very loose (unless Congress specifies something specific. For example, According To The US Government Printing Office, Section 554 of the Bipartisan passed H.R. 4660, An Act Making appropriations for the Departments of Commerce and Justice, Science, and Related Agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2015, and for other purposes.

"Sec. 554. None of the funds made available in this Act may be used to carry out Operation Choke Point."[0]

My point is that managers and execs have a lot of wiggle room and the ability to make a number of funding transfers and decisions. They could clearly use budgeted funds or make a request for funding to accomplish actual data retention if they wanted to.

What makes you think that the Republicans involvement will make sure that "this will never happen". It doesn't matter what the Republicans do when the Democrat administration under President Obama just ignores them and the law.

[0] http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-113hr4660pcs/html/BILLS-1...

Edited to change the source material because some people could not handle the link originally used and to add the second sentence in the 3rd paragraph.

News Busters is a far-right wing rag. I don't trust them any more than Mother Jones for reliable information.

True and True. That's why I quoted only a portion of the article and why I checked their source material (the link I put in its place). I originally used it only because it was A#1 on the top of Google when I originally searched for a source.

Politics might be appropriate for some discussion on HN, but your comment had no substance or value outside of democrats/republicans evil/good. Take that shit to reddit or the comments of a partisan news site. Like the link you posted. I'm sure tons of people in the comments would love agree with you.

My comment has plenty of substance. However the comment I replied to had none and did typical partisan finger pointing and generalizing. How was the substance of the quoted material partisan? Who cares where it comes from as long as it is the truth.

Well for one thing, the Executive doesn't make laws - Congress does. The Executive has veto power. Which can't be used if the relevant bill never makes it to the Executive's desk.

The relevant bill hasn't, and I will my hat if it ever comes into existence and reaches the floor.

The executive implements laws, and has managerial discretion within the law as its written. To imply that from $1.8b a functional arm of the government doesn't have e-mail archives is absurd. The IRS is in the buseinss of doings audits. In 2011 this is well beyond a question of competence and into a question of willful negligence. Imgaine if this was put in front of a jury? This type of problem is so predictable, ignorance is no excuse.

Great so who do you think is reponsible? The current executive? Previous executives under whom this would still have been a problem? The IRS head? Previous heads? Managers? Congress?

Again: my exact point was that the last thing anyone involved in this inquiry is going to do is actually pass specific legislation to address the actual problem, and mandate/authorize spending to do so. Instead we'll get calls for political bloodletting, for all the effectiveness of its name.

Well then the obvious answer is to hold no one responsible. Especially the people who are currently, willingly, and knowingly violating Federal Law and their own policies..... sarcasm.

In reality, they will pass legislation, that will probably go way overboard and will budget 100 times more than is necessary in order to payoff some friend or group of friends (business as usual for Establishment Ds and Rs). Now mind you that the house will do this and because of the politics the Senate, led by the Majority Democrats, will promptly ignore it. Or they will pass it because it will benefit some friend of theirs and the President will sign it but decide to include a signing statement saying that they don't agree with any of it and that they will not implement it. Oh and they will put it as part of a large non-related omnibus package with a title talking about helping Homeowners Purchase Crop Dusters.

You need something to happen to drive archiving. It's bureaucratic minutiae that the President doesn't give a hoot about until something bad happens. The CIO of the IRS doesn't wake up one morning and decide to start archiving stuff. The chief counsel probably wants to delete everything (except for his stuff)

Same thing in the private sector. Nobody outside of regulated industries like pharma archived email, ever until Enron. Everyone didn't start doing it until the Federal courts changed the rules of civil procedure several years ago.

The IRS does a lot of moronic things. Keeping overpriced outdated technology is one of them. These types of improvements can and should be self paying. When you require that citizens keep records for many years, you should do the same.

Targeting organizations based on political affiliation is even worse than general incompetence.

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