Congressional auditors chastised regulators for weakening banking rules.

But the commission has not evaluated the Congressional auditors' methods and cannot explain the differences, he said.

Congressional auditors have estimated that the government could lose an additional $60 billion over 25 years.

Congressional auditors say these laws cost taxpayers an extra $500 million a year and reduce the amount of food aid.

I.R.S. line workers and Congressional auditors warned that the system was ill suited to its task and vastly too complicated to be of use.

Congressional auditors often haggle with individual agencies over access to specific documents.

The agency has been repeatedly criticized in recent years by Congressional auditors and others for gaps in data collection.

But even now it "is well below what they need," William Hunt, a Congressional auditor, said in an interview.

It also systematically blocked proposals to have Congressional auditors oversee spending, or to impose severe penalties for fraud.

Security experts and Congressional auditors say the system is vulnerable to undetectable vote tampering and hacking.