In the search for savings and efficiency in federal spending, the Pentagon, with its nearly $1 trillion budget and $4.1 trillion in assets, is too big to overlook. While Republicans and Democrats often have different ideas about where to start, some proposals transcend the partisan divide through sheer common sense. Ensuring our military service members have the tools, supplies and knowledge to repair their own equipment is one such proposal.

As Congress prepares to mark up the National Defense Authorization Act, the Pentagon’s annual must-pass policy bill, Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Tim Sheehy, R-Mont., along with Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Wash., are making the case for legislative language requiring Pentagon contractors to provide the military with reasonable access to the materials and technical data necessary to repair weapons and equipment.

Under the status quo, contractors often prevent service members from repairing their own equipment through contract provisions that limit access to the necessary tools and data. It’s a bad deal for taxpayers. It can cost up to three times as much to pay Pentagon contractors for the same job a service member or civilian employee could perform in-house, and by monopolizing repairs, companies can charge whatever they want because the Pentagon has no alternative. Ensuring the military has reasonable access to repair tools and data could save billions of dollars by giving the military more options to pay for repairs, from training service members to opening up repair contracts to competitive bidding.