Sen. Jim Banks Praises Military Recruitment Surge Under President Trump on Senate Floor

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"Thank you, Mr. President.

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Reagan National Defense Forum at the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. I've been to the event a few times before. It's 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.

The forum has been around for 12 years. This was the 12th annual event, and I've been able to attend the incredible event a few times early on in my time in the House. It's been a few years since I've been there.

But the event is filled with some of our nation's top military leaders, cabinet officials, administration officials, much of the leadership of the Pentagon. It's 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.

At 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.

The 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's watch.

This unbelievable accomplishment doesn't get as much attention as it deserves, and that's 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.

When 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.

When 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's 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's as much as four divisions of troops in the United States Army.

The same story, Mr. President, happened to the Navy, which I know is important to you, it's 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' worth of United States sailors. That's how bad the recruitment crisis got on Joe Biden's watch.

But how did this happen? I think this is important context and history, when we evaluate where we are today. It's clear to everyone that the Biden administration treated the military as a political experiment. I don't think, Mr. President, we've seen the military politicized in a way that it was under the four years that Joe Biden was president ever before in American history.

The 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.

But 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.

Instead, 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's 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, "a risk of developing a warrior caste in America." 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't want them. It's no wonder that we had a recruitment crisis in the United States Army.

Mr. President, when you combine all of these factors, it's no wonder that the military under Joe Biden failed to meet its recruitment numbers.

Simply put: fewer young Americans wanted to serve, because they stopped believing in the mission.

I 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's down from 70% in the 1990's. And to this day, this story astonishes me. I'd love to see an update on that poll to show what the patriotism numbers look like today.

Mr. President, I know you know this: you can't build a military without patriots. You can't ask young men and women to put their lives on the line when the culture tells you that the country isn't worth fighting and dying for. You can't 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.

Something 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't exactly inspire people to serve. Young Americans asked themselves, "who wants to be part of that type of military?" And they said, "not me."

Mr. President, the good news, though, and I want to get to the good news, because this is really good news - 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.

Military 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.

And 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's 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.

Under 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's say that they support these strikes on these drug boats.

When you ask young men and women, if that's the type of military they want to be part of, one that's stopping drugs from flooding into America, killing our brothers, our sisters, our neighbors, our friends, you get an overwhelming yes.

When 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't dead, it was just dormant during those four years, waiting for leadership that America can believe in, like what we've got in the White House today in Donald Trump.

Secretary of War Hegseth is doing an extraordinary job. He's 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's military can meet tomorrow's challenges. Our enemies have been put on notice under Pete Hegseth's leadership at the Department of War.

Mr. President, the path forward is clear: we must continue supporting this administration's 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's some great news.

Mr. President, as we close out 2025, there are so many things to talk about.

But this accomplishment, in and of itself-what 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.

Mr. President, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy New Year. I'm looking forward to a lot more good news like this in 2026.

Thank you. I yield back."

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