A technology adviser working for the Elon Musk-run Department of Government Efficiency made a stunning revelation about what he discovered at the Internal Revenue Service during an appearance with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Fox News.
In an interview with host Laura Ingraham, Sam Corcos, who is working at the IRS to modernize the tax collection agency’s software and computer systems, said that the upgrade is more than three decades behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget — with no resolution yet in sight.
I’ve been brought in to look at the IRS modernization program, as well as the operations and maintenance budget,” Corcos told Ingraham. “This is a huge program that is already 30 years behind schedule and $15 billion over budget.”
“The IRS has some legacy infrastructure… old mainframes running COBOL and Assembly, and the challenge is how do we make that a modern system? Virtually every bank has done this, but we’re still using a lot of those old systems,” Corcos continued.
“Typically, in industry, this takes a few years and maybe a few hundred million dollars. We’re now 35 years into this… It was supposed to be delivered in 1996,” he added.
“A huge part of our government is collecting taxes. We cannot perform the basic functions of tax collection without paying a toll to all these contractors. We really have to figure out how to get out of this hole. We’re in a really deep hole right now,” Corcos noted further.
Bessent then said that the real issue isn’t with IRS staff but with agency contractors.
“Many of the employees are fantastic. It’s this consultant group. They’re like a boa constrictor. They’re like a python,” Bessent said. “They’ve constricted themselves around our government, and the costs are unbelievable. They’re being passed on to the American taxpayer.
“The entrenched interests, the consultants, the Democrats, mainstream media, they just want to blow this project out of the water,” Bessent added. “This is the opposite of government efficiency, not elimination, not extinction. Sam and his crew are making it more efficient to work for the American people. So what’s wrong with it working better, cheaper, faster, and with more privacy?”
Meanwhile, Musk told Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Monday that “magic money computers” within the U.S. government are generating payments “out of thin air,” leaving lawmakers clueless about federal spending.
Speaking on Cruz’s podcast, Musk revealed that 14 such systems exist within the U.S. Treasury and other agencies, transferring large sums without the necessary evidence to justify the payments. Musk claimed that in departments housing one of these systems, reported spending could be off by as much as 5 percent of the budget when presented to Congress, while Cruz suggested that these improper payments could potentially total “trillions” of dollars.
“They’re mostly at Treasury,” Musk said about the computers discovered by his U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, “but there’s some at [Health and Human Services], there’s one or two at State, there’s some at [the Department of Defense].”
“I think we’ve found now 14 magic money computers. They just send money out of nothing,” he told the Texas Republican senator.
Expounding on DOGE’s discovery, the unconventional entrepreneur explained that the presence of these computers prevents the Treasury Dept. from fully informing lawmakers about the federal government’s total spending.
“You may think that government computers all talk to each other, they all synchronize, they add up what funds are going somewhere, and it’s coherent and that the numbers you’re presented as a senator are actually the real numbers. They’re not,” he said.
