Jim Banks: “I thank the gentleman for his leadership of the Republican Study Committee. It is one of the great honors that I have in…”

“I thank the gentleman for his leadership of the Republican Study Committee. It is one of the great honors that I have in this Congress to serve with him and others to advocate for conservative principles to move our country forward. With a new Republican administration, many of the innovative ideas coming from this House now have a chance to become law and achieve real results for the American people. The contrast between this administration and the last one is most clear when it comes to prioritizing readiness for our Department of Defense and caring for our veterans. As those veterans in Congress know firsthand, shortchanging readiness on the front end will have long-term implications in the years that follow. We have the moral imperative to ensure that our young men and women who go into harm's way are never in a fair fight. We have an obligation to ensure that our forces are the best-trained, best-equipped, and best-led fighting force in the world. This obligation starts with prioritizing a stable and predictable budget and appropriations process. Our leaders in the Department of Defense must be able to forecast and anticipate training needs, and that means ending the trend of continuing resolutions that offer neither good fiscal discipline nor the ability to plan that our military leaders desperately need. Consider that two-thirds of our Army are not ready to deploy.…”