Yesterday, the New York Times detailed the highly irregular manner preceding the administration’s decision to make the CSR payments once Congress refused to grant the White House’s request for an appropriation. Despite strong disagreements over the legality of these payments among IRS employees, top political appointees with the administration, including then-Attorney General Eric Holder and Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, signed off.

At a congressional deposition, David Fisher, an IRS financial risk officer at the time, testified that the process behind the authorization of the CSR payments was unusual. Moreover, he testified that the “cost-sharing reduction payments are not linked to the Internal Revenue Code, as far as I could tell, directly anywhere. There is no linkage to the permanent appropriation, nor is there any link to any other appropriation that was indicating what account these funds should be paid from.”

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