30 years behind schedule, $15 billion over budget.
WASHINGTON (PNN) - March 21, 2025 - Sam Corcos, a DOGE deputy and special adviser to the Fascist Police States of Amerika (FPSA) Treasury Department, sat down with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham on Thursday and unloaded a jaw-dropping exposé on the IRS and Treasury.
Corcos, the co-founder and CEO of Levels - a health-tech company that uses real-time biological data to help people make smarter food choices - was brought in to assess the IRS’s so-called “modernization” effort. What did he find? An unaccountable leviathan hemorrhaging tax dollars.
“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 are in a really deep hole right now,” DOGE representative Corcos said.
Corcos told Ingraham that one of his top priorities during his six-month tenure is to review the IRS modernization program, along with other operational and budgetary matters.
Corcos revealed that the IRS’s so-called modernization project is not only 30 years behind schedule, but also a jaw-dropping $15 billion over budget.
Corcos said, “Yeah, I’ve been brought in to look at the IRS’s modernization program in particular, as well as the operations and maintenance budget. I really care a lot about this country, and this is a huge program that is currently 30 years behind schedule and already $15 billion over budget.”
Laura Ingraham said, “Wait a second. Explain to our viewers what the program is in layman’s terms.”
Corcos said, “The IRS has some pretty legacy infrastructure. It is actually very similar to what banks have been using - old mainframes running COBOL and assembly. The challenge has been: how do we migrate that to a modern system? Virtually every bank has already done this, but we are still using a lot of those same systems.”
Corcos continued, “Typically, in industry, this takes a few years, maybe a few hundred million dollars. We are now 35 years into this program. If you ask them now, it is five years away - and it has been five years away since 1990. It was supposed to be delivered in 1996, and it is still five years away.”
Corcos was trying to assess the system, but career bureaucrats, many of whom are terrified of accountability, resisted his efforts.
Laura Ingraham asked, “In your area of expertise, what informs your ability to do this review?”
Corcos replied, “I am a software developer by background, and I am CEO of a software technology company.”
Laura Ingraham then asked, “When you came into the department, was the first thing you did to just get into the guts of the system and see how it operates?”
Corcos replied, “Yeah, really talk to the software developers - talk to the people on the ground and see what they are seeing. I think one encouraging thing is we actually have quite a lot of software talent on the ground - the people writing code. We actually have quite a lot of good people.”
“It is almost always the case that when I ask them what the correct answer is, how do we solve these problems, they are almost always right - which is good,” said Corcos. “They just haven’t been in a position to be empowered to make those decisions. I am actually pretty optimistic that we can solve this.”
According to Corcos, the IRS spends a staggering $3.5 billion annually just to keep the lights on - and 80% of that is funnelled to outside contractors and licenses.
Corcos said, “It is hard to really grasp the scale of this because we process at the IRS about the same amount of data as a mid-size bank. A typical mid-size bank will have somewhere between 100 and 200 people in IT, and they will have an operations and maintenance budget in the $20 million-a-year range.”
When asked by Ingraham what surprised him the most upon stepping into the Department of Treasury, Corcos didn’t mince words.
He said, “I would say it is the disconnect between leadership and the people actually doing the work – that is a big one. I would say that it doesn’t take a lot, just somebody who cares, to solve these problems. You find contracts that are $10, $20, $30, $50 million, and you just ask, ‘Why are we doing this?’ Everyone is just like, ‘I don’t know.’ Then you cancel it and nothing happens. Inertia has just taken over.”