The Internal Revenue Service posted a hiring notice for hundreds of new armed agents amid Republicans' concerns about the tens of thousands of staffers the agency is hiring with funding from the Biden administration.
The agency is looking for more than 350 "criminal investigation special agents" in all 50 states, with applicants asked to serve minimum 50-hour weeks, engage in "dangerous assignments," and "carry a firearm," according to the agency job posting, which was first published in February. The positions are in the IRS's Criminal Investigation division, which deals with money laundering, terrorist activity, and other cases.
The armed agents "must be prepared to protect him/herself or others from physical attacks at any time and without warning and use firearms in life-threatening situations."
The description goes further, adding the applicants "must be willing to use force up to and including the use of deadly force."
The hiring is a part of the tens of thousands of agency employees expected to be hired through the $80 billion the Biden administration allocated to the IRS in the trillion-dollar Inflation Reduction Act.
Democrats have advocated for the funding as a means of increasing government revenues. A Congressional Budget Office analysis found that the hiring would bring in more than $200 billion in additional revenue for the government over the next 10 years.
The IRS will hire as many as 87,000 additional employees, a number that sparked outrage among Republicans. Estimates show the majority of new revenue will come from audits and scrutiny of those making less than $200,000.
Sen. Tim Scott (R., S.C.) last year slammed the proposal to hire tens of thousands of new IRS staffers.
"When faced with the decision to spend $45 billion on America’s largest revenue collection agency, or give it back to parents to help them get their kids the help they need, the Senate needs to choose the latter option every single time," Scott told the Washington Free Beacon.
The staffing increase would more than double the current IRS workforce, which has around 78,000 full-time staffers, according to federal data. It would make the IRS larger than the FBI, Border Patrol, State Department, and the Pentagon combined.