{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["http://issa.house.gov/press-releases/2013/11/issa-duckworth-introduce-serv-act/", "Issa, Duckworth introduce SERV Act", "2013-11-13", "2013", "2013-11", "Republican", "House", "CA", "Darrell Issa", "I000056", "issa.house.gov", null, null, "legacy", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 Today, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Oversight Committee member Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) introduced the Support Earned Recognition for Veterans (SERV) Act, H.R. 3469, a bipartisan bill to eliminate abuses in the veterans benefit system and ensure that only individuals who have actually served in the military can qualify to receive government contracting preferences and similar benefits.\n\u201cEach year, the federal government offers hundreds of millions of dollars of small-businesses contracts to service-disabled veterans so that they can grow their small businesses while providing the government with needed services and goods,\u201d said Rep. Issa.\u00a0 \u201cThose who never actually served our country are not \u2013 and should not \u2013 be entitled to receive this special status.\u00a0 This loophole must be closed to reduce these egregious abuses and prevent taxpayer dollars from being inappropriately awarded to non-veterans.\u201d\n\u201cMy neighbors sent me to Washington to reach across the aisle and get results,\u201d said Rep. Duckworth. \u201cThis is a common-sense solution to a small problem, but a good start so that we can spend taxpayer dollars more effectively and honor our veterans properly.\u201d\nAs the law stands, individuals who attend a military preparatory school but never joined the Armed Forces may claim veteran status.\u00a0 The SERV Act would clarify the definition of \u201cveteran\u201d to exclude such individuals and prevent them from exploiting the system to secure \u201cservice-disabled veteran-owned small business\u201d contracting preferences.\nThe SERV Act follows a recent Oversight and Government Reform hearing that examined a flaw in the current veterans benefit system that allowed an IT contractor to secure a \u201cservice-disabled veteran\u201d designation and, as a result, receive $500 million in government contracts, despite never having served a day in the military.\nThe SERV Act has 57 original cosponsors.\nTo read the full text of H.R. 3469, please click here.\nTo read a joint article by Reps. Issa and Duckworth, please click here.\n\u00a0\n###", 1, "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z", "2026-03-30T12:14:52Z"]], "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": ["http://issa.house.gov/press-releases/2013/11/issa-duckworth-introduce-serv-act/"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.061564940959215, "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"}