President Donald Trump on Saturday floated the idea of sending nearly 90,000 new IRS agents to the southern border after pausing hiring at the agency.
Trump spoke at a rally at the Circa Resort & Casino in Las Vegas over the weekend, and he joked that the tens of thousands of new IRS agents — hired under former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act — would be fired or reassigned to work at securing the border.
“They hired, or tried to hire, 88,000 workers to go after you and we’re in the process of developing a plan to either terminate all of them, or maybe we’ll move them to the border,” he told supporters
“I think we’re going to move them to the border where they are allowed to carry guns. You know, they’re so strong on guns. But these people are allowed to carry guns. So we will probably move them to the border,” he said to cheers from the crowd.
Trump suggests sending IRS agents to the border https://t.co/ljTsu78o1I pic.twitter.com/1HyeL9HCr7
— New York Post (@nypost) January 26, 2025
Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office freezing hiring for any “Federal civilian position that is vacant at noon on January 20, 2025,” for 90 days with some exceptions.
“This order does not apply to military personnel of the armed forces or to positions related to immigration enforcement, national security, or public safety. Moreover, nothing in this memorandum shall adversely impact the provision of Social Security, Medicare, or Veterans’ benefits. In addition, the Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) may grant exemptions from this freeze where those exemptions are otherwise necessary,” the order states.
The Inflation Reduction Act granted about $80 billion in additional funding to the IRS, with most of those dollars, $46 billion, allocated toward enforcement, according to the Tax Policy Center. Operations support received $25 billion, and most of the rest went toward modernizing systems and taxpayer services.
Republicans have promised to rescind the additional funding allocated to the IRS under the 2022 Biden-era legislation.
