Peach Tree Times

In early Aug., Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) proposed an amendment to the Inflation Reduction Act, which would require hiring 18,000 additional Border Patrol Agents before any new IRS agents are hired. 

Sen. Raphael Warnock was among Senate Democrats who voted against Scott's proposal.

"Democrats would rather audit Americans than secure the border," Senate Republicans said on Twitter. "When they passed their reckless spending bill, they voted against hiring more border patrol agents. Instead, they spent $46 billion to hire 87,000 IRS agents."

Under the Inflation Reduction Act, voted in favor of by every Senate Democrat and negotiated by Democrat Senator Joe Manchin (WV), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) would receive $80 billion in funding to hire as many as 87,000 additional staffers to increase tax audits and monitoring on Americans, according to the Washington Free Beacon. This increase would more than double the agency's current employee numbers and allow the IRS to "employ more bureaucrats than the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and Border Patrol combined."

Biden administration officials announced Monday that over the past 11 months, U.S. authorities have made more than 2 million immigration arrests along the southern border. This marks the first time annual enforcement statistics have exceeded that threshold, the Washington Post reports.

This comes as federal data shows the IRS currently has 78,661 full-time employees. Under the Inflation Reduction Act, this workforce number would rise to 165,661 total IRS agents. For comparison, Border Protection says it currently employs 19,536 Border Patrol agents; the FBI employs around 35,000 people; the State Department employs just over 77,243 people and the Pentagon employs roughly 27,000 people.

The latest figures also show U.S. Customs and Border Protection detained 203,598 migrants attempting to cross over from Mexico in August alone. This puts authorities on pace to reach more than 2.3 million arrests during the government’s 2022 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, immigration authorities have reported the highest-ever daily number of migrants entering the United States along the southwest border. Data from the internal Department of Homeland Security shows Border Patrol officers are logging roughly 8,000 migrant encounters per day as of Sept. 15.

A National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) press release shows that last month Senate Democrats voted unanimously against Senator Rick Scott’s (R-FL) measure to prioritize hiring border patrol agents over hiring IRS audit agents.