Senator Tammy Duckworth is an Iraq War Veteran, Purple Heart recipient and former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs who was among the first handful of Army women to fly combat missions during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Duckworth served in the Reserve Forces for 23 years before retiring at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in 2014. She was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2016 after representing Illinois’s Eighth Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives for two terms.
Senator Duckworth is focused on improving oversight and accountability across the government. Since entering Congress, Senator Duckworth has prioritized rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in government programs. For example, when the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found the U.S. Department of Defense wasted billions of taxpayer dollars on purchasing duplicative camouflage uniforms, Senator Duckworth helped amend the law to crack down on this unnecessary government spending. As a result of this good government reform, the GAO reported that taxpayers saved $4.2 billion over 5 years when the Army avoided procuring a new family of camouflage uniforms. She is committed to developing bipartisan solutions that make our government more transparent and accountable to the people it serves.