Hearing Wrap Up: Biden Admin’s Focus on Progressivism Over Warfighting Exacerbates Recruiting Crisis, Demoralizes Service Members, & Negatively Affects Military Preparedness

WASHINGTON—The Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs held a hearing titled, “Ensuring Force Readiness: Examining Progressivism’s Impact on an All-Volunteer Military.” Subcommittee members discussed with experts how the Biden Administration’s push for progressivism to be infused into the military has negatively affected military readiness and recruitment. Subcommittee members also discussed how diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training has taken priority over common sense military capability training, which demoralizes our men and women in the armed forces.

Key Takeaways:

The Biden Administration is prioritizing progressive ideologies over warfighting capabilities and military readiness.

• Brent Sadler—Senior Research Fellow at Heritage Foundation—testified that perceived politicization and progressive policies imposed on the military are proving harmful: “One of the central organizing principles of the DoD has become to view all matters through the lens of DEI, which is inessential if not actively harmful to warfighting capabilities. In its actualization, DEI is distracting from developing a well-trained, merit-based military, and alienating. Ensuring equality of opportunity is vital for combat effectiveness because it allows the military to be selective within a larger pool of talented Americans willing to serve their nation and their fellow servicemen and women.”

• Jeremy Hunt—Chairman at Veterans on Duty Inc.—discussed how men and women serving in the armed forces want to be focused on military objectives, not progressive ideologies: “The great men and women of our armed forces never asked to be thrust into the toxicity of American politics. These distractions came from political appointees that elevated political considerations above the needs of our national defense. And these policies have been defended by a military bureaucracy that should know better.”

The Biden Administration’s progressive agenda has created a military recruiting crisis.

• Meaghan Mobbs—Senior Fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum—outlined how recruiting has suffered from progressivism fostering a lack of pride in our military and country: “While pride in self and pride in nation may not necessarily be related, it is highly likely both are contributing factors in the decision-making process to join the armed forces. It is for this reason that curricula or instruction which hyper-focus negatively on our immutable characteristics are destructive to teams and esprit de corps. Moreover, a consistent focus on what divides us rather than what unites us is particularly pernicious to the aforementioned pride in nation.”

Member Highlights: Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) discussed the amount of taxpayer dollars the federal government spends on DEI programs

Subcommittee Chairman Grothman: “How much are we spending, as far as you’re concerned on these diversity-type bureaucrats?”

Mr. Hunt: “Mr. Chairman, right now the numbers are $114 million on DEI programs, in some cases we’re paying these DEI bureaucrats over $200,000 dollars a year.”

Chairman Grothman: “$200,000 DOLLARS FOR A DIVERSITY PERSON?”

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) outlined how diverting resources away from military readiness towards progressive agendas does not serve the military’s best interests.

Rep. Biggs: “This type of effort – whether its climate change, whether its gender equity, whether its DEI, whether its ESG mandates – seems to be diverting from military readiness and certainly might have an impact on whether individuals want to join them military.”

Ms. Mobbs: “Anytime that dollars are pulled away from doing operational or tactical training is problematic broadly speaking. I do think to your point Congressman that that level of funding directed specifically to that program is also direct evidence of implementation of a broader agenda regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas) spoke about the importance for military leaders to be unbiased and insulated from partisanship to ensure our military is ready to keep Americans safe.

Rep. Fallon: “I’m very concerned about the direction – I don’t want my military to have democratic generals, I don’t want Republican generals, I want American generals. I don’t want to know your politics. We have some that serve like that and have others that are serving political masters and wearing their ideology on their sleeves…I don’t want this administration to deter that very narrow pool to service. Because if you grow up not loving this country, and believing it’s worth fighting for, you’re not going to serve. And there’s too many people in the political arena that are doing just that.”

Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) discussed how the Biden Administration’s push for a radical green energy agenda could cripple our warfighting capabilities during an emergency.

Rep. Armstrong: “Do you have any concerns about converting all non-tactical military vehicles to electric by 2035?”

Mr. Sadler: “If there is a war that occurs with China it is going to rely on a military footprint that’s in the west coast, California obviously, home to a lot of these bases. If their infrastructure and logistics can’t support military operations or the military can’t have access to reliable energy, then that has a tactical impact on a war.”