President Donald Trump may deploy nearly 90,000 Internal Revenue Service agents the Biden administration recently hired to guard the southern border.
Speaking at a rally at Circa Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, the 47th Commander-in-Chief told a cheering crowd of ardent supporters that he could also just fire the IRS employees, who rake in salaries funded by $72 billion allocated to the IRS under the Inflation Reduction Act.
“On Day one, I immediately halted the hiring of any new IRS agents,” Trump declared during the unscheduled stop on the casino floor. 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.”
“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,” the president quipped.
🚨#BREAKING: Watch as President Donald Trump announce that he intends to reassign nearly 88,000 IRS agents to border patrol duties or demand their resignation.
Watch as President Donald Trump makes a major announcement during a rally in Las Vegas, Nevada.… pic.twitter.com/QMfCJlCII6
— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) January 25, 2025
Trump began his second term by issuing a flurry of executive actions on day one, including a directive implementing a 90-day freeze on federal hiring, excluding posts related to the military and national security.
The temporary hiring freeze will affect all federal agencies except the IRS. The newly established Department of Government Efficiency in tandem with the Office of Management and Budget will establish whether it is necessary to employ more IRS staffers.
According to Trump’s executive order, the OMB and DOGE, “shall submit a plan to reduce the size of the Federal Governemnt’s workforce through efficiency improvements and attrition.”
In 2022, Joe Biden signed an $80 billion funding package as part of the Inflation Reduction Act to expand the IRS and ramp up the agency’s capacity to collect more revenues. The IRS was directed to use the money to hire 87,000 new agents to target Americans.
“Should Trump really follow through on his threat and let go of thousands of IRS agents—or transfer them to other roles—during his presidency, the agency could see its capacity to collect taxes and ensure that individuals and corporations comply with tax laws significantly reduced. That could lead to less enforcement, higher rates of tax evasion, and potentially less revenue for the federal government,” Newsweek reports, bashing Trump for threatening to reduce the scope of the federal agency.
“While nobody really likes to pay taxes, the U.S. government relies on tax revenues to fund programs that are crucial to everyday Americans, including Social Security, defense, infrastructure, and health care. Cutting a large portion of the IRS workforce could impact the government’s ability to collect taxes efficiently, which may lead to a budget shortfall or an increase in the national deficit,” the leftwing publication continues.
Trump also declared a national emergency at the US-Mexico borders and vowed during his inaugural address to create an external revenue office that will accrue all foreign-sourced revenue.
What he dubbed the “golden age” of the United States will include the implementation of a 10 to 20 percent tariff on all foreign goods and a levy of up to a 60 percent tariff on Chinese imports.
“I will immediately begin the overhaul of our trade system to protect American workers and families,” Trump said in his inaugural address. “Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.
“It will be massive amounts of money pouring into our Treasury – coming from foreign sources. The American dream will soon be back and thriving like never before.”
