Catherine Rusoff
Washington – Rep. Pat Ryan said Sunday that he sees the small share of Americans — less than 1% — who are active duty members of the U.S. military as “deeply problematic as a democracy.”
“When you lose contact between those who are fighting our wars and their families and everyone else, that’s such an essential thing that we have to figure out how to bring people together and get more people to serve,” Ryan said on “Face the Nation”. before Memorial Day.
Ryan, a veteran, said he and his colleagues in Congress have worked to prioritize recruiting within an annual defense bill, citing challenges between each branch of the military with recruiting numbers.
“We have been pushing a lot of briefings to say this is not acceptable to the Department of Defense,” Ryan said. “And we’re starting to see the numbers go up.”
But for the New York Democrat, he said “the most powerful thing” he did in Congress was participate in a hand-washing tradition at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to mark Memorial Day. The bipartisan effort was started by Rep. Mike Waltz , who also appeared on “Face the Nation” on Sunday.
CBS News
Waltz, a Florida Republican who is also a veteran, said of the tradition that it is “important for the American people” to see lawmakers from diverse backgrounds “honoring our ancestors” together despite their differences.
“I saw the acrimony and the infighting and I said, you know, let’s get a group of veterans together,” Waltz said, explaining how the tradition began. “People who really have skin in the game.”
Ryan and Waltz praised the work to increase the number of veterans in Congress, saying they hope to get more people who served in the military or performed national service to represent Americans.
And Waltz noted that when it comes to serving the country, “service doesn’t just have to be military.”
“One of the things we are adamant about and advocate for is getting us back to national service as a country,” Waltz said. “This doesn’t necessarily have to be uniform, but it could be with the national park, private classes in the city center, care for the elderly. But how can we put young people in an environment where they are learning leadership, discipline, followership? , serving a cause greater than themselves and with fellow Americans who may not look like or have the same backgrounds as them.”
Waltz suggested that the government encourage service, proposing that young people could serve a year after graduation and receive a benefit.
“I think we need to rethink the service as a country,” he added.
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