Representative Mike Garcia joined Fox News last night to speak on the United States military’s level of preparedness. During the segment, Rep. Garcia detailed the numerous issues that are resulting in all-time low recruitment and retention rates.

Representative Garcia said the following:

“We’re at relatively all-time low readiness levels in terms of what our war fighters are capable of doing. Retention and recruiting is the lowest it’s been since the 1970s. It’s not just low pay, most of these patriots will still serve if we pay them $21,000 per year like we do, which is still significantly lower than what they deserve. It’s not the operational tempo alone, they will go on deployments three to four times during a five-year period and not complain about it. They still want to serve the country,” Garcia said. “But when you have leadership that turns their back on the troops, when there are debacles like the one in Afghanistan last year, when we have invertebrates serving as the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Secretary of Defense, and in this case, the Commander in Chief, it’s not inspiring to join the military. And when this is overlayed with the mandatory vaccines, the pay being increased by only 4.5% during an 8% inflationary period, people don’t want to join the military and those in the military tend to get out earlier than they planned.”

Click here to view the rest of Representative Garcia’s interview.