Rep. Jim Banks: Trump's Navy fleet plan is 'absolutely necessary'

Only three months on the job in Washington, Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., says he is ready to help out his fellow members of the U.S. armed forces, especially his naval comrades, ahead of a potential spending fight as a government shutdown looms in late April.

A lieutenant in the Navy Reserve, Banks is a freshman member looking to make a difference for the U.S. military from his spot on the House Armed Services Committee. He wants to reverse the perceived "readiness crisis" throughout branches of the armed services, the subject of repeated testimony from commanders recently.

In an interview with the Washington Examiner, the freshman congressman and member of the House Armed Services Committee gave his take on the top priorities for the Navy, President Trump's plan to increase the number of ships in the Navy to 350 and the need for an appropriations budget rather than another continuing resolution that he says would do harm to the U.S. military.

Washington Examiner: As you prepare to view the fiscal 2017 supplemental and the fiscal 2018 budget, what do you see as the biggest priorities for the Navy in the next year?

Banks: Well, this is my first experience at all of this, so as I learn about the budget process, I've learned a lot over the last three months about the inadequacies of funding the government through continuing resolutions rather than passing a full fiscal year appropriations budget, especially when it comes to the military. So over the past few months, as you know, we did pass the fiscal year '17 defense appropriations budget out of the House. It's, unfortunately, stalled in the Senate. First and foremost, to answer your question, we need to get back into a regular order of funding the military through annual appropriations budgets rather than through this poor process of continuing resolutions, which is literally holding back the military as we face the readiness crisis. But I support the efforts to substantially fund the military at a higher rate. The president's budget was $603 billion. I support the McCain/Thornberry budgets of over $640 billion for the next fiscal year 2018. It's just imperative on so many levels related to the military at large that we do that. Specifically about the Navy, the readiness crisis, like in each of the other branches, is significant and real. When combatant commanders are telling us that only 40 percent of their requests for the use of the Navy are being met due to current funding shortfalls, we have a readiness crisis in the Navy that's as significant and real as we face in any of the other branches.