{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-gluesenkamp-perez-take-on-military-contractors-overcharging-us-military-restricting-servicemembers-from-repairing-equipment", "Warren, Gluesenkamp Perez Take on Military Contractors Overcharging U.S. Military, Restricting Servicemembers from Repairing Equipment", "2024-12-12", "2024", "2024-12", "Democrat", "Senate", "MA", "Elizabeth Warren", "W000817", "www.warren.senate.gov", "warren", "https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases", "scraper", "Warren, Gluesenkamp Perez Take on Military Contractors Overcharging U.S. Military, Restricting Servicemembers from Repairing Equipment\n\nNew bill would ensure servicemembers have \u201cfair and reasonable\u201d access to repair materials.\n\nBill Text (PDF) | Bill One-Pager (PDF)\n\nWashington, D.C. \u2013 U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) introduced the Servicemember Right-to-Repair Act to increase military readiness and cut costs by allowing servicemembers to repair their own equipment.\n\nOur military pays Pentagon contractors hundreds of billions of dollars annually to purchase weapons systems and other equipment. However, the equipment is often subject to contractor-imposed restrictions on how servicemembers can diagnose, repair, and maintain their own weapons, leaving servicemembers unable to conduct necessary fixes and beholden to contractors no matter how austere the environment. These restrictions put military readiness at risk and pose concerns about the Pentagon overspending on basic services and equipment.\n\nThe Navy has been forced to fly contractors to ships at sea to perform simple fixes, Marines in Japan had to send engines back to the U.S. for repairs instead of fixing them on-site, and Marines in a training exercise were forced to choose between voiding their equipment warranty by fixing it or marking the equipment inoperable.\n\nThe Servicemember Right-to-Repair Act ensures our military will be provided with the tools and materials needed to maintain the equipment it has purchased and directs the Pentagon to use those tools to reduce sustainment costs, improve military readiness, and build servicemember skills needed in possible future austere environments. Specifically, this bill:\n\nRequires that each major weapons program\u2019s acquisition strategy includes 3 cost-saving proposals to cut sustainment costs without reducing performance requirements.\n\nMandates a report on cost-saving strategies to enhance transparency.\n\nRequires the Pentagon to assess the cost-effectiveness of access to intellectual property, ensuring it is a priority throughout a program\u2019s lifecycle.\n\nEnsures contractors provide our military with \u201cfair and reasonable\u201d access to repair materials, including parts, tools, and information, so servicemembers are able to repair their own equipment when needed.\n\nDefines \u201cfair and reasonable\u201d as providing similar prices, terms, and conditions as those made available to the contractor\u2019s authorized repair providers to ensure an even playing field.\n\nGives our military additional flexibility to access and use repair data, and ensures access to repair data is a key consideration in regulations governing the rights of the United States in items developed with government funding.\n\nRequires the Pentagon to track and publicly report instances when the military is forced to have a contractor repair equipment because right-to-repair restrictions prevent servicemembers from maintaining or repairing their own DoD equipment.\n\nPromotes accountability through reports from the Government Accountability Office.\n\n\u201cPentagon contractors are taking advantage of our military, forcing them to pay excessive prices and wait weeks for basic equipment repairs. Without the right to repair their own equipment, our servicemembers in the field are at risk,\u201d said Senator Warren. \u201cI\u2019ve long pushed for cutting waste out of the Pentagon budget, and this bill cuts out greedy contractors by empowering servicemembers and creating competition.\u201d\n\n\u201cMaintaining a ready and agile military is dependent on our servicemembers being able to repair their own equipment quickly and effectively. Military technicians want to be working with their hands to fix things \u2013 not getting stuck on the phone on hold with a manufacturer. Shipping equipment out for repair or bringing authorized contractors to sea or the battlefield isn\u2019t just costly, challenging, and time-consuming \u2013 it deprives servicemembers of experience fixing the equipment they rely on to stay safe in hostile situations,\u201d said Rep. Gluesenkamp Perez. \u201cBy ensuring our military has the ability to fix critical equipment, we can empower our servicemembers, boost military readiness, save taxpayer dollars, and bring back respect for these skills.\u201d\n\nThe Servicemember Right-to-Repair Act is endorsed by the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), the American Economic Liberties Project (AELP), and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG).\n\nSenator Warren has repeatedly sought to bolster competition and fight back against costly right-to-repair restrictions:\n\nIn September 2024, Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote to the Defense Department and to the defense contractor industry regarding the costly restrictions imposed on the Department of Defense that bar the military from repairing its own military equipment and instead force it to pay billions of dollars extra to military contractors.\n\nIn July 2024, Senator Elizabeth Warren included a provision in the Senate Fiscal Year 2025 NDAA that would require contractors to provide DoD with \u201cfair and reasonable\u201d access to repair materials with a bipartisan committee vote of 21-4.\n\nIn August 2023, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey (D-Mass.), celebrated the U.S. Department of Transportation\u2019s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reversing course and allowing enforcement of Massachusetts\u2019 pro-consumer Right to Repair law.\n\nIn June 2023, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey (D-Mass.) called on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to reverse its course after it sent a recent letter to auto manufacturers, advising them not to comply with Massachusetts\u2019 Right to Repair law.\n\nIn February 2022, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Angus King (I-Maine), and Congressman Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) urged the Department of Health and Human Services to move forward with the march-in petition submitted for the prostate cancer drug Xtandi.\n\nIn July 2021, Senator Warren and Representative Doggett sent a letter to the Department of Defense requesting information about steps taken to reduce costs of DoD-funded prescription drugs and medical products.\n\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T19:07:19Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.warren.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/warren-gluesenkamp-perez-take-on-military-contractors-overcharging-us-military-restricting-servicemembers-from-repairing-equipment"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.2662270348519087, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}