U.S. Rep. Claudia Tenney, R-N.Y., told Newsmax on Monday night she will be reintroducing a bill that will redirect funds targeted for the hiring of 87,000 additional Internal Revenue Service agents to the Customs and Border Patrol agency for the fight to secure the southern U.S. border.
In September, Tenney announced the DIRECT Funds for Border Security Act, a bill co-sponsored by 11 other Republicans that would rescind all the unobligated funds under the Inflation Reduction Act to hire new IRS enforcement activities and reappropriate them for Customs and Border Patrol to hire additional agents to secure the southern border.
"I'm hoping if we don't get it done with the bill [that] we're going to try to pass tonight on defunding the 87,000 [new IRS agents], we can at least look into this bill and do what they call a rescission and take that money and give whatever is left over back to what we've got in the border," Tenney said on "Eric Bolling The Balance." "The money hasn't been spent, as far as we know."
Anything the House does regarding budgeting has an uphill fight to get approval from a Democrat-controlled Senate and signed by President Joe Biden. But Tenney said she is hoping the conservative direction the House will be taking on funding and policy will give Republicans leverage to force Democrats and Biden into a compromise.
"Think about this: Because we know that we're going to stand for conservative values, and we have some strong conservatives, we think that's our secret weapon," Tenney said. "We can get the Senate and the Biden administration to understand that if they don't comply, and they don't come at least to the middle and compromise with us, they're not going to get anything done, either.
"We've got a little bit more leverage than we thought with this narrow majority, so it's good that we actually held their feet to the fire and got Kevin McCarthy to make some concessions to give us some strength as individual members and empower us."
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