Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
President Donald Trump on Saturday said he has halted any new hires of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agents.
“They hired—were trying to hire 88,000 new workers to go with you, and we’re in the process of developing a plan to either terminate all of them or maybe we move them to the border,” Trump remarked at a speech in Nevada, while also saying, “On day one, I immediately halted the hiring of any new IRS agents.
“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.
He was repeating a claim made in 2022 by Republicans that some of the IRS agents who would be hired would be able to carry firearms, although the bill did not designate money specifically for a large number of armed IRS employees. At the time, the IRS said it would also obligate about $8.64 billion of the new funding during the 2023 and 2024 fiscal years, and that 7,239 of the new hires during those years will be enforcement staff.
In his administration, President Joe Biden approved plans to direct $80 billion to the IRS under the largely Democrat-passed Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. House Republicans later clawed back billions of dollars from the legislation, most recently in the attempt to avert a government shutdown in December.
The original 87,000 or 88,000 IRS agents figure appears to have come from a U.S. Treasury Department estimate in 2021 to determine the level of hiring of agents to maintain the agency’s efficiency in collecting taxes.
Last year, the IRS said it was going to hire nearly 20,000 new employees and deploy new technology over the next two years as it ramps up an $80 billion investment plan to improve tax enforcement and customer service.
Soon after taking office, Trump signed an executive order to freeze the hiring of federal civilian employees across the government, stating that “no Federal civilian position that is vacant at noon on January 20, 2025, may be filled, and no new position may be created except as otherwise provided for in this memorandum or other applicable law.”
“Except as provided below, this freeze applies to all executive departments and agencies regardless of their sources of operational and programmatic funding,” it adds.
Aside from the hiring freeze, the president suspended Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act funding disbursements in what his office said was “terminating the green new deal,” including pausing funds “supporting programs, projects, or activities that may be implicated by the policy established in Section 2 of the order.”
Section 2 of the executive order mainly focuses on how to direct agency actions including protecting U.S. national and economic security and removing a federal electric vehicle mandate.
Trump also has said he wants to set up an External Revenue Service to collect “tariffs, duties, and other foreign trade-related revenues,” while Trump has proposed imposing a 25 percent tariff on Canada and Mexico over border security.
During his Nevada speech, the president also suggested that he would like to end federal income tax and funding the government solely through tariffs. “How about just no taxes, period? We could do that,” he said.
Right before Trump took office, former IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel stepped down from his position. Trump has named former Rep. Billy Long (R-Mo.) to head the agency, pending Senate confirmation.
Reuters contributed to this report.