Selected federal hiring sprees included in House Republicans’ sweeping tax cut package

House Republicans are planning hiring sprees across government as part of a sweeping budget package focused on cutting taxes, with a handful of agencies poised to receive billions of dollars to recruit, hire and retain staff. 

As the Trump administration has focused on slashing federal employees across government, House Republicans are looking to carve out some exemptions to the trend in key priority areas. House committees this week are putting forward and voting on pieces of legislation that will make up the larger reconciliation package, which Congress will then be able to approve with only a simple majority vote. 

In the House Homeland Security Committee, lawmakers have advanced a measure that will give Customs and Border Protection $4.1 billion over the next four years to hire 3,000 new Border Patrol agents, 5,000 new Office of Field Operations customs officers and hundreds of additional support staff. The measure also includes $2 billion for retention and signing bonuses for CBP staff and $285 million for training. 

The bill would allocate more than $50 billion to CBP for border barriers and new facilities. 

Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., vowed to get the legislation over the finish line in the House and Senate, despite Democrats universally opposing it. 

“Homeland Security Committee Republicans held the line to advance budget recommendations that provide Customs and Border Protection with the resources needed to continue President Trump’s success in securing our border for years to come,” Green said. 

The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday marked up its part of the reconciliation package, which included $8 billion, available through fiscal 2029, for Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hire 10,000 new agents. It would receive an additional $858 million for signing and retention bonuses. Republican lawmakers are looking to pay for the hiring surge by charging an unprecedented asylum application fee of $1,000 and a $550 for work visa fee for some immigrants. 

Under President Trump, ICE has taken an aggressive approach to immigration enforcement as the administration seeks to deliver on its promise of mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. While the effort has led to controversial strategies, mistaken detentions and removals and significant challenges in court, it has failed to result in the pace of deportations that Trump had promised. 

The funding and bonuses would help the Homeland Security Department components meet the ambitious hiring goals, but the agencies are still likely to run into challenges. Presidents Obama, Trump and Biden all sought at various times to increase Border Patrol staffing, but those efforts have largely been unsuccessful. That is despite the agency currently offering recruiting incentives of up to $30,000. 

Border Patrol failed to reach its hiring goals from fiscal 2021 through fiscal 2024, according to a Government Accountability Office report last year, and its total onboard staff has decreased in each of those years. The number of authorized agents jumped from 19,000 to 22,000 in that period, but the actual number of agents employed has declined. Biden secured funding increases for small upticks in Border Patrol staffing, but his requests for more dramatic hiring surges went unfulfilled. 

Trump in his first term vowed to ramp up the border security workforce and his administration signed a contract worth up to $300 million to help it bring on 7,500 border personnel, but canceled it after it managed to hire just 15 employees. ICE under Trump solicited vendors for a similar contract, but canceled it before it got off the ground. Lawmakers for years were forced to claw back money appropriated for CBP hiring after the agency failed to meet the agency’s targets. Trump eventually oversaw small staffing gains at Border Patrol, but they paled in comparison to his ambitious goals.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee also put forward its piece of the reconciliation package this week, which included $1 billion for the Federal Aviation Administration to hire air traffic controllers. The measure included $15 billion for FAA overall. 

FAA has suffered from staffing shortages for years, but Biden in 2024 signed into law a FAA reauthorization bill that requires the agency to hire to the maximum level possible through 2029. The law also included recruitment and retention incentives. 

Earlier this year, Transportation Department Secretary Sean Duffy announced a pay bump for controllers in training and cut steps in the hiring process.  

Elsewhere in the House, Republicans are planning to use the reconciliation bill to raise federal employees’ contributions toward their pensions that will effectively result in pay cuts.