Scott Franklin Asks Army Official If Military Recruitment Is ‘Lowering Standards’ To Meet Goals

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During a House Appropriations Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Scott Franklin (R-FL) questioned Sergeant Major Michael R. Weimer of the Army about upholding high standards in military recruitment.

Transcript

00:00Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all gentlemen for your time here today and I

00:04really appreciate the work that you do all you all do on behalf of the

00:08hundreds of thousands of young men and women that are that put their faith in

00:11their leadership their chain of command to take care of them and you all do that

00:14magnificently. For sake of time I do want to dive a little bit into retention and

00:18recruitment. I brought this up in previous hearings in past years the

00:23Army and the Marines both of our sergeant majors addressed it so just for

00:28sake of time I'll limit to you you two but Sergeant Major Ruiz Marine Corps it

00:35looks like everything is going very well from what you were just just sharing

00:38there but you exceeded your 2024 goals and retention which as we know retention is

00:43just as important as bringing them in if we can't keep them then we're gonna have

00:45problems down the line and then so far through fiscal year 25 you're at 98%

00:50of first-term retention and 108 and subsequent so sounds like you've got

00:55everything going well if there's more to that I'd love to come back and hear what

00:58still may concern you but Sergeant Major Weimer I want to dive a little bit more

01:03into your testimony you had shared that you had a goal for fiscal year 24 of

01:0855,000 you all finished the year at 55,150 so you you squeaked that one over the

01:14goal line which sounds good but you know on closer look you also shared that the

01:20retention was 52,289 for fiscal year 24 I'm not sure what the goal was but the goal

01:25for 25 is 54,800 so I don't know if you if you were short of the mark on the

01:30retention but you know there was a military.com article last month and I

01:36understand it's the press and trust me there's a lot of things that the press

01:39doesn't always get right and I see it day to day but I want to share a little of

01:41that and this kind of get your comment on it the the article was titled the Army

01:45is losing one-quarter of soldiers in the first two years of enlistment so pretty

01:49big drop-off after we get them in the door they further unpack that and there's

01:54conversation about the the pool of eligible recruits out there we get that

01:58we've had these conversations here before only 23% of 17 to 24 year olds are

02:03eligible to be to serve in our military only 8% are eligible for a clean

02:09enlistment that scares the heck out of me that 92% of kids in America couldn't

02:12serve in the military even if they wanted to but within the Army last year waivers

02:18doubled from 8400 in 2022 to 17,900 last year so more than double the waivers most

02:26of those were medical waivers I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on that

02:30were these fitness standards were was it obesity or there are other underlying

02:36conditions I do I know that there there's a greater ability to find out a

02:41recruits medical history now coming in that we may not have had before if they'd

02:44lied to you before that you weren't going to find out until it until it manifested

02:47but concerning to me you know last year there were a thousand forty five that

02:53were recruited that were brought in with misdemeanor waivers but worse than that

02:57401 with felony convictions which was four times the amount from 2022 I do

03:03appreciate that none of those were for sexual violence but one question I'm

03:07curious what kind of convicted felons are we allowing in and and how do we and how do

03:13you explain that to moms and dads whose sons and daughters are going off to know

03:16they're going to be sharing the bunks with convicted felons that's kind of not

03:18what we promise in the recruiting commercials but how do we make the

03:23argument that we're not lowering standards if we barely squeak by the goal

03:27and and we see the number of people who don't meet haven't traditionally met the

03:32standards or they're or bringing in criminals so I'll stop there and give you a

03:36chance to unpack that a little bit for me thank you thank you

03:40Congressman for that there's a lot there I'll try to touch on a little bit of all

03:45of it we we met our we met our goal last year we absolutely did future soldier

03:50prep was a was an important part of that but not everybody that goes to future

03:54soldier prep passes future soldier prep I think it's important to understand

03:58the standard hasn't changed future soldier prep gives our sons and daughters I

04:03have to be careful how I say that it's our sons and daughters an opportunity to

04:07potentially serve because based off of blame COVID blame something they just

04:13didn't have the prependency that we've had in the past I don't want to be too

04:18accusative there to our sons and daughters but that has been incredibly

04:21successful but they don't all make it out of future soldier prep but we do

04:25invest in them and then send them home to the felony comment because I want to

04:29make sure I don't run out of time on that one I'll take that one for the record

04:33because that one's new to me but military dot just reporting what I see what was in

04:38the article but that's that's what that's basically your felony yeah I'll take

04:42that one is there in two years before I'll take that one that one that one

04:45stings a little more than than the rest of that because I agree with you

04:50especially with a daughter that will be commissioned here in two years this

04:54year's mission just as as US Army Recruiting Command says we're crushing this

05:00year we raised it to 61,000 and we are exceeding where we were last year on goal

05:07to surpass our recruiting mission of 61 with the potentially one of the largest

05:13depths delayed entry just like our my Air Force teammate down here one of the

05:17largest delayed entries we've seen in decades so recruiting doing really well

05:22right now I'll finish with retention retention is not about contracts for us in

05:28the Army we met our retention goal of 104 over 114 percent last year we don't set

05:34a hundred percent of retention as a goal for us we set a very specific mission and

05:39then evaluate ourself not all soldiers are going to make it through their first

05:44term that is just statistically factual decades of data I've been with young

05:51sailors to know that too so yes and it's a it's okay and it and all by it's not all by

05:56the it's not always UCMJ that gets young troopers either sometimes it's just the

06:02the lifestyle in the military is just not for them we help them transition out but

06:07but I will say the first and second year comments in that article the

06:12statistics are no different than anything we've seen in the past so it is

06:16not a future soldier prep new data point seeing first-time soldiers fail at a

06:22higher rate all right I appreciate that and for all of you if as we see these retention

06:26or the recruitment numbers going up let's do make sure that if there have been places

06:30like high school education other things where we've made concessions in the past we know

06:34historically that doesn't work well in the long run I'd love to see us tighten those

06:38standards back up and thank you mr. chairman I yield back

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