{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.banks.senate.gov/news/press-releases/sen-jim-banks-praises-military-recruitment-surge-under-president-trump-on-senate-floor/", "Sen. Jim Banks Praises Military Recruitment Surge Under President Trump on Senate Floor", "2025-12-17", "2025", "2025-12", "Republican", "Senate", "IN", "Jim Banks", "B001299", "www.banks.senate.gov", "banks", "https://www.banks.senate.gov/news/press-releases/", "scraper", "Click Image Above to Watch the Full Speech\n\n\u201cThank you, Mr. President.\n\nLast week I had the pleasure of attending the Reagan National Defense Forum at the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. I\u2019ve been to the event a few times before. It\u2019s a beautiful setting. The library is such a great tribute to one of our greatest presidents, Ronald Reagan, who is known for his efforts to rebuild the military through peace through strength in the Reagan years that we often think about and talk much about today.\n\nThe forum has been around for 12 years. This was the 12th annual event, and I\u2019ve been able to attend the incredible event a few times early on in my time in the House. It\u2019s been a few years since I\u2019ve been there.\n\nBut the event is filled with some of our nation\u2019s top military leaders, cabinet officials, administration officials, much of the leadership of the Pentagon. It\u2019s also a bipartisan event with a congressional delegation from both sides of the aisle, includes also leaders and innovators in our national defense industry who join the event every year, as well.\n\nAt this past forum, I participated in a panel discussion about recruitment and retention in our military. I was actually joined by a former Democrat colleague of mine in the House, Jimmy Panetta. His father, Leon Panetta, was sitting in the audience to hear his son and myself and the other members of the panel talk about this important subject.\n\nThe panel got me thinking, though, as we close out 2025, about how far we have come in just one year, on this subject, recruitment and retention in the military. As we close out 2025, I can think of many big wins that have come out of the Trump administration, but none as significant as what President Trump and Secretary of War Hegseth have done to repair the recruitment crisis that took place on Joe Biden\u2019s watch.\n\nThis unbelievable accomplishment doesn\u2019t get as much attention as it deserves, and that\u2019s why I wanted to come down to the floor today and talk about that incredible success story and share with you some of what I talked about in that panel a little over a week ago.\n\nWhen I served in the House of Representatives, before I got to the Senate, I chaired the Military Personnel Subcommittee on the House Armed Services Committee, so I saw up close how bad things got under Joe Biden, especially at the Pentagon and in our military.\n\nWhen Joe Biden was president, he presided over the worst recruitment crisis in the over 50 years of an all-volunteer force of our military. In 2022, the Army set a goal to recruit 60,000 new soldiers, but only managed to recruit 45,000. That\u2019s 15,000 soldiers short. And the same thing happened again the following year in 2023, when the Army was, again, 15,000 soldiers short of its 65,000-soldier recruitment goal. When you add up the recruitment losses under Joe Biden between 2021 and 2025, the Army shrank by 40,000 soldiers due to a lack of new recruits. That\u2019s as much as four divisions of troops in the United States Army.\n\nThe same story, Mr. President, happened to the Navy, which I know is important to you, it\u2019s important to me. In 2023, the Navy was 7,500 short of its goal to recruit 37,000 new sailors. In 2024, it was nearly 5,000 short of its goal to recruit over 40,000 new sailors. So between 2021 and 2025, the Navy shrank by 16,000 sailors, which is about three aircraft carriers\u2019 worth of United States sailors. That\u2019s how bad the recruitment crisis got on Joe Biden\u2019s watch.\n\nBut how did this happen? I think this is important context and history, when we evaluate where we are today. It\u2019s clear to everyone that the Biden administration treated the military as a political experiment. I don\u2019t think, Mr. President, we\u2019ve seen the military politicized in a way that it was under the four years that Joe Biden was president ever before in American history.\n\nThe Biden Pentagon dropped physical fitness standards to support woke DEI initiatives throughout the armed services. As a side note, by the way, the Marines were the only good news during those four years, because the Marine Corps never dropped their standards.\n\nBut you have former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who immediately after Joe Biden was sworn into office ordered a 60-day standdown to combat extremism in the military. They spent nearly 6 million man hours military-wide on that standdown. Those are hours, Mr. President, that could have been spent on training our troops to combat our biggest enemy, our biggest threat, that being China, or, I would contend to you, that those 6 million man hours could have been spent on preparing to evacuate and leave Afghanistan in a much more responsible way than what the military did.\n\nInstead, they focused on politics at the beginning of the Biden administration. Then, you had General C.Q. Brown, at the time the General Chief of Staff of the Air Force, who issued racial quotas for the United States Air Force. You had Joe Biden\u2019s Secretary of the Army arguing that it was a bad thing that more than 80% of our recruits come from military families. Think about that for a minute. She said there was, \u201ca risk of developing a warrior caste in America.\u201d When the Secretary of the Army should have been trying to boost recruitment, she insulted patriotic Americans who are inspired by their parents to serve and suggested that the Army didn\u2019t want them. It\u2019s no wonder that we had a recruitment crisis in the United States Army.\n\nMr. President, when you combine all of these factors, it\u2019s no wonder that the military under Joe Biden failed to meet its recruitment numbers.\n\nSimply put: fewer young Americans wanted to serve, because they stopped believing in the mission.\n\nI often think back to an article from the Wall Street Journal that I read back in 2023. It had a poll that showed that patriotism among Americans, especially young Americans, had plummeted to historic lows. Again, 2023, Joe Biden is the president, aftermath of what happened in Afghanistan, all of this other foolish experimentation, the politicization of our military. According to that poll, only 38% of Americans in 2023 said that patriotism was very important to them. That\u2019s down from 70% in the 1990\u2019s. And to this day, this story astonishes me. I\u2019d love to see an update on that poll to show what the patriotism numbers look like today.\n\nMr. President, I know you know this: you can\u2019t build a military without patriots. You can\u2019t ask young men and women to put their lives on the line when the culture tells you that the country isn\u2019t worth fighting and dying for. You can\u2019t expect the next generation of Americans to raise their right hand, Mr. President, like you did, like I did, like so many of our colleagues did in the United States Senate, to protect this nation, when so few believe that America is the greatest country in the history of the world.\n\nSomething else that I think about is how catastrophic the withdraw from Afghanistan played a huge part in the shortage of the military recruitment under Joe Biden, as well. Americans saw 13 brave servicemembers killed at Abbey Gate, including a Hoosier, and American guns and vehicles abandoned to the Taliban on that embarrassing and disastrous and deadly day. It didn\u2019t exactly inspire people to serve. Young Americans asked themselves, \u201cwho wants to be part of that type of military?\u201d And they said, \u201cnot me.\u201d\n\nMr. President, the good news, though, and I want to get to the good news, because this is really good news \u2014 the good news is that this has all been fixed in a really short period of time. President Trump changed everything. In fact, it changed immediately on election day, just a little over a year ago.\n\nMilitary leaders testified to the fact that military recruitment increased dramatically the day that Donald Trump won the election. The Army met its 2025 recruitment numbers four months early. The Army reached its retention goals for the whole career in just six months. Navy recruitment hit a 20-year record.\n\nAnd how did all of this happen? President Trump and Secretary Hegseth inspired young people to serve again. Because President Trump and Secretary Hegseth are restoring our military\u2019s strength and greatness. They cut away the woke, DEI initiatives throughout the Department of War, and focused on what really matters to our military: patriotism, a sense of mission, and lethality.\n\nUnder Joe Biden, young Americans saw the botched withdrawal of Afghanistan. Today, they see a military that puts America first, taking out narco-terrorist drug boats before they can bring deadly drugs into our country. 71% of American\u2019s say that they support these strikes on these drug boats.\n\nWhen you ask young men and women, if that\u2019s the type of military they want to be part of, one that\u2019s stopping drugs from flooding into America, killing our brothers, our sisters, our neighbors, our friends, you get an overwhelming yes.\n\nWhen America is strong, when America is confident, when America wins, our young people want to be part of that, they want to serve. Patriotism isn\u2019t dead, it was just dormant during those four years, waiting for leadership that America can believe in, like what we\u2019ve got in the White House today in Donald Trump.\n\nSecretary of War Hegseth is doing an extraordinary job. He\u2019s the exact leader at the department that we need to restore the focus on lethality, after four disastrous years under Joe Biden, when the focus was on anything but that. He has brought back the warrior ethos to our military. And has worked hard to ensure that America\u2019s military can meet tomorrow\u2019s challenges. Our enemies have been put on notice under Pete Hegseth\u2019s leadership at the Department of War.\n\nMr. President, the path forward is clear: we must continue supporting this administration\u2019s efforts to restore our military and make our military as great as it can be again. Our all-volunteer military depends on Americans who choose to serve, and Americans will choose to serve when they believe in the mission, trust their leaders, and take pride in this great country. President Trump is giving them that, and America is stronger for it. That\u2019s some great news.\n\nMr. President, as we close out 2025, there are so many things to talk about.\n\nBut this accomplishment, in and of itself\u2013what President Trump and Secretary Hegseth have done to restore recruitment, save our military, is really good news that I wanted to come to the floor and talk about as we close out this year on the eve of going home forthis Christmas break.\n\nMr. President, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy New Year. I\u2019m looking forward to a lot more good news like this in 2026.\n\nThank you. I yield back.\u201d\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T20:09:11Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.banks.senate.gov/news/press-releases/sen-jim-banks-praises-military-recruitment-surge-under-president-trump-on-senate-floor/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.1886290051043034, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}