>> "washington journal" continues. host: don bacon >> the republican from nebraska serving on the armed services committee a 30 year veteran of the air force and the house recently passed the

national defense authorization bill give us the highlights guand what you think this will do for the military. and a way to modernize the nuclear force. and with the icbms. with the all three need to be replaced we found a way to invest in all three legs of the triad. we have to encounter russia aggressiveg very also ukraine and eastern europe. and with those conventional capability.

president proposed a 4 percent cut after inflation but there was no way with a 4 percent cut and then to build a military and do all the things and then with the more pay raises illicit forces. >> and overhaul addressing threats and then how will those stockpiles be filled backup afterwe giving weapons to ukraine? >> the billy past, we did a lot of weapons to ukraine. it is necessary.

and bombing of ukrainian cities. half of the women are being assaulted. in the russian disbursements bet this are crimes against humanity what russia is doing. but if ukraine loses that would not be the last. call them renegade states. that constant is what we are doing right now we have to help ukraine prevails of putin and the russians know they cannot get away we see. pre-world war ii behavior is totally unacceptable. and then enable them to preserve their independence.

and with those men tensions over taiwan so what are you hearing about the situation in china and what is the military strategy quick. >> the chinese are looking at how the response will be to ukraine and if week that would inform their decision of how to handle taiwan and think we have an application to taiwan a country of 24 million people have embraced our ideas of democracy and freedom of the press and freedom of religion and the free market system one of the most prosperous countries in the world per capita they went to have a close relationship with us and they treasure their freedom. we have to help them defend themselves now before it's too late. we need to encourage taiwan to develop or acquire missiles

that can hit the and fabius ships and increase air defense capabilities but also provide anti- ballistic missile technology no doubt china will hit taiwan with a lot of ballistic missiles with key strategic facilities. we have to help them with that now with the hope you never have to use it but to deter china fromai invading. speaker pelosi say she goes to taiwan and china is making threats but i was discouraged to hear president biden take china side on this they didn't have a right to tell americans who can visit taiwan. we should not fall for the browbeating ends the wrong

message when china threatens and we cowered to those threats. i think also by her visit, i visited a couple of years ago, these is that display a commitment to taiwan and tells china that we are serious with our relationship with taiwan. it will be the states that pullback and allow china to threaten us to to retreat from that. host: want to welcome our viewers to join this conversation. questions, comments are welcome. democrats (202) 748-8000. republicans (202) 748-8001. an independents (202) 748-8002. you can also text us and include your first name, city, state (202) 748-8003. congressman, back to this defense bill, it authorizes $839 billion in national defense

billion $37 billion more biden has requested a 4.6% pay raise for troops, the largest in 20 years and bonuses for service members. what do you think this does for recruitment? guest: retain, recruit forces. right now recruitment is down. there are a couple of factors echo into that. one of the main things, we are prayed -- competing with the private sector bill. we have a low workforce participation in the country. we need to attract people into the military. a concern that i have, for the last decade about 72% of the young folks that are 18, 19, 20 years old 72% that qualify, i have seen recent numbers the numbers are going up now. that should alarm us.

i think it is becoming a national priority, how do we encourage physical fitness, better nutrition, better health, for our teenagers and young folks? 75% of our youth does not qualify to get in the military that is a problem. host: army secretary from the associated press she had to say the army is facing the most challenging recruitment environment since the inception of the volunteer force this is not a when your challenge, we will not solve this overnight. what is it looking like? how many years are we talking about? guest: we are trying to turn that around. the years under reagan where it was the most patriotic to join. there are things going on here that come together, first of all, post-covid and by the way we are kicking out tens of thousands of military who want to stay in because they did not take the covid shot.

they also have to realize the covid vaccines have been politicized on both sides. i can back that up. i think our 18 and 19-year-olds are quite confused when they hear people from both directions on this. i think we should mark -- show mercy and grace. they also have post afghanistan peered what happened in afghanistan was a travesty. it was a botched withdrawal. i think it lowered a little bit of the perception of the military. you have a perception of conservative areas that the military has gone to woke and i think our administration should be concerned about that. some of that has been lost in translation. with this lower employment, the private sector is competing for the other 25% aggressively.

the military has to step up and make sure it is providing a very competitive and and inviting pay gap. just point them the right way. host: you mentioned the soldiers wanting to join the armed forces are not meeting the requirements, i want to show the viewers what they are. this is between 18 and 35, have to be mentally and physically fit, good moral standing, permanence resident or u.s. citizen, a high school graduate or equivalent and a minimum score on the placement exam. this physically fit portion of it, how do you address that? when they are applying to get into the armed services, as basically teenagers? guest: that is one of my biggest concerns. half of the high schools don't

have physical education. i think they need to make this a priority in our schools. neighborhood sports, i just think we need to raise the level of discussion for the parents to realize that this is a problem. this is a national issue. it is a local issue. and i think if we have to raise the bar on this, 75% of our youth cannot get into the military why ensure physical fitness? there are a lot of issues there as you pointed out. one of our high school kids they are being incentivized or encouraged to play sports. i know when i was a kid we had three tv channels and in the afternoons they were all soap operas. today our young folks, they have hundreds of channels and a lot of computer games, we have to encourage and make it a priority

to get our young folks involved in physical activity. i worked on a farm. some kids don't have a opportunity where it is a natural part of life to be in shape. three quarters of our youth cannot defend our country. we can't ignore it. this has not been a priority in our country, it needs to be. host: john in massachusetts, democratic caller. what you think? caller: what's that? host: you are up first. good morning. caller: nice to be here. i want to ask the representative were you ever in the military? why would anybody want to join the military? can't even take care of the guys you screwed up many years ago. guest: you're right, it is too

long to get that in there. i would say the first path among other things. i will tell you the nebraska legislature and i did serve their, they have rules that you can only pass the bill pertaining to that bill a single subject bill and our congress they have a bill everybody needs to pass i would say both sides of the aisle, they tried to put something onto it it's like loading more things onto a bus. we do need to pass that and i voted for a version that came out in the senate and make changes to it. we are getting the third iteration between the house and the senate and i think it would have passed fairly easily but now we have this other bill that was announced yesterday by chuck schumer. increased spending by $450

billion and i think it will -- i would agree with the caller. i hope people in their 20's and 30's because they -- toxic fumes. this is our air's agent orange. host: the congressman served in the air force for nearly 30 years. decorations include two bronze stars, to regions of merits, service metals, and aerial achievement metals. michigan caller:, you are next. something your recruitment

process is about, why doesn't the military get more involved in the sending boards the peace corps and the civilian core like we used to? protection agencies, someone wouldn't that be a good idea for recruitment for the infrastructure plan, part of the infrastructure system and everything. i would like to have your comment about that. i think it is what we are really missing here. guest: i don't know if it should be private military, the military defense our country, building highways and bridges and working overseas, however i do think the color is right that our service programs can be expanded. my grandfather served in the ccc during the depression.

i think service programs in the united states or overseas in the peace corps, i think it gives us a broader perspective certainly not from nebraska some of the truckers and you get to meet people from new york, arizona, alabama, and you get a more national perspective. and i think service opportunities are a added option for folks 18, 19, 20 years old or in their 20's. i think the color is right, i'm on legislation to expand these service opportunities. we are hoping in the united states to build roads and schools and so forth.

i think it strengthens our country, i think it strengthens our opportunity. host:, ha nebraska, republican. caller: hello. first off, i want to tell everybody i want to thank you for all that you have done in terms of the time in the service and everything. they have a smear campaign going on over here in omaha about a fireman having a tough time claiming that you are backing a bill that is going to increase the pockets of the bigger businesses and let the mom and pop shops suffer on the side. i thought they can't beat you at the ballot box, they are trying everything else and i just wondered if you could make a comment about that, thank you. guest: there is a progressive

group basically. taxes on individuals were too low, and an almond -- anonymous person put a million dollars to rent an ad. they were talking about the tax reform where we passed it probably five years ago. we have the highest business taxes. and our personal taxes were too high. how do you compete in a business community when our businesses are paying a third more in taxes than those in europe and asia? i lowered our business tax rates to what the world averages. we want businesses to come back to the united states. we also incentivize businesses to immediately assess their

investment. if they want to build a plant, we are seeing that's all over right now. by doing so, putting thousands of construction jobs and creating other jobs that just has a great effect when you incentivize. so i stand by the tax reform. we have the strictest economy in 40 years leading up to covid. i want to point out that it helped us out of covid. a lot of people attribute these covid bills. the tax code has done more to get our businesses back on their feet. unfortunately, congress in joe biden .2 raise taxes again. it takes a long time to do it. we are looking at 9.1% inflation, we may be told today, i don't know what the results are going to be that the -- that we are officially in a

recession. this is a smear campaign by the opponent. my appointment -- opponent was a bit -- big tex razor. host: the gdp numbers that will come out this morning many people will be looking to see if it is an indication we are or headed towards a recession. caller: good morning, everyone. i was wondering, congressman, had the congress studied the source of the problem that you renew me to. when you talked about not being able to pass educational test, physical test and so forth. i was wondering if you identified the actual ideology from those particular problems.

in addition, i was also wondering if you have any solutions or if you share some of the solutions that i had come up with such as making sure that out of our collective tax dollars that schools are able to spend on education programs because on the state level, many states balance their budget by taking things away from public schools. host: that's exactly what the congressman was talking about but i will let him answer you again. guest: there are multiple factors for how we got in this crisis. three quarters of our youth can't get in the military. people are talking about this. i've been talking about it for four years now. i know it's an issue. i agree with the caller, we should do everything at the local and state level.

find ways to incentivize a physical education in our schools. i surely want to help expand that in our schools. i think we can also do more in our neighborhoods and communities to expand local sports. i will give you an example, in omaha our local police they created a program for kids that are struggling economically and they started a soccer league and baseball leagues to help programs and targeting hundreds of our junior high kids or elementary kids, highs go kids they are playing soccer and baseball every weekend. we know more -- we need more of those kinds of activities and opportunities. i think i also just recite that's realize it's a cultural issue. tv and computer games, raising

awareness level for parents and our educators to try to get people from doing too much tv and games. we also have a nutritional problem. we are eating foods that are not healthy for us. i work in the agricultural committee. we need programs that go to the schools work with the snap program. first of all, as a nation we have to realize the crisis. the first step that -- that's the first step in solving the problem. host: fayetteville, north carolina. caller: thank you for taking my call. good morning. and thank you, representative, thank you for your service to our country. i live here in a very patriotic part of our country. there are a couple of things to

touch on. i just retired from teaching rotc. there is a lack of physical education requirements for young people in their high schools and middle schools. we do have assorted programs here in our area for afterschool and other sports activities for young people like skip couple and soccer and so on. but my greatest concern and i think you will refer to theasvab the kids have very low scores. you were air force, the requirements are much less demanding. so they can be quite selective. the army, as i observed has real struggles getting the numbers

they need. the kids cannot get the scores on the asvab. i was told they went down to get the numbers for recruiting which is kind of alarming. as far as physical fitness i think the military once we get the kids in, i think we can get them into shape. but the asvab scores are another challenge. not just with physical fitness but with, you probably want to start education requirements and compare internationally with our kids. host: let's take that point. guest: greg, thank you. i was in the air force and i was on the can rational side -- congressional side. having to go to fort bragg multiple times, they raised american warriors.

i appreciate our special forces there. spot on. testing is an issue. two years of covid, i think the analysis is there now peered we went backwards. kids that stayed home and were trying to learn virtually through high schools and junior high, the scores went records. we hope to learn from this sending teenagers home to learn virtually for most of the children, most of the students it did not serve them well. we went backwards the last couple of years. i think educators and our local schools are governed by the school boards. try to get a little bit more control but we have to study how do we raise the bar on basic skills when it's reading,

writing, and arithmetic. how do we get more people out of high school that are interested in welding, electrical work, pipe fitting, there is a huge demand for these jobs out there. we are not getting enough people into these jobs. there is a huge task if you are an educator, if you are a student and tangent we have a big challenge out there and we have to rate -- raise the scores and folks who may not go to college they can make a great living. host: your reaction to the secretary of state yesterday saying there is a substantial proposal on the table to russia to release the prisoners brittney griner, paul wehlan,

what do you think? guest: we want to get them home, they are in custody and i think for trivial reasons i believe but the russians want to trade for someone in custody here for significant reasons. we have seen it with iran and north korea, they hold hostage american citizens sometimes for no reasons or trivial reasons and they hold them hostage to get back someone who was a spy or conducted felonies in our country. i would not travel to russia i'm sanctioned anyway so i can't go. but the fact is, don't go to russia where you are under threat and you have a dictator that is doing what he is doing there.