New Legislation Proposes Fixes for VA Education Benefits
In May 2026, Veterans Education Success submitted testimony to the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs on pending legislation affecting VA education benefits. This statement discusses failures at the Department of Veterans Affairs, including disrupted benefits payments, fraud involving student veterans, and major IT failures.
New Legislation Proposes Fixes for VA Education Benefits
In 2026, the 119th Congress reviewed multiple proposed laws intended to restructure the Department of Veterans Affairs’ education and oversight systems. Veterans Education Success submitted a formal statement for the record analyzing and critiquing these bills, which include, but are not limited to:
- Student Veteran Benefit Restoration Act of 2025 (H.R. 1391)
- Veterans Readiness and Employment Improvement and Accountability Act of 2025
- Establishing the Veterans Economic Opportunity and Transition Administration Act of 2025
Student Veteran Benefit Restoration Act
The Student Veteran Benefit Restoration Act of 2025 would, if passed, create a way to restore GI Bill entitlements to veterans defrauded by predatory higher education institutions. But the legislation has limitations.
Under current law, civilian students may apply for a complete discharge of their federal student loans if their school engages in documented fraud or closes unexpectedly, but veterans do not have a similar option for the GI Bill.
Months or years of exhausted GI Bill benefits can be permanently lost when a school utilizes deceptive practices.
The act seeks to address this, but has a serious flaw. It lacks a mechanism to restore benefits retroactively to those defrauded before the bill’s passage.
You read this correctly. As currently written, the bill applies only to fraud on or after the date of enactment, with no retroactive GI Bill restoration. That is the version of the proposed bill available at press time, but subject to change in future versions.
What Veteran Education Success Says
According to Veterans Education Success, “We have heard from hundreds of students that schools have actively misled them by promising high-quality education but providing substandard instruction, promising job placement, credentials, and salaries that students cannot obtain with their degrees, changing degree requirements after the student has enrolled, or lying about the real cost of tuition.”
“Unfortunately, too many programs that are approved for GI Bill benefits are currently engaging in this kind of misconduct. Bad actor schools cause serious harm to the veterans they are meant to help, leaving veterans with worthless credits, burdensome debts, and wasted benefits.”
“Despite providing poor results and misleading veterans about their offerings and outcomes, many of these programs and schools continue to rake in millions of taxpayer dollars through the recruitment and exploitation of veterans and the abuse of their hard-earned GI Bill benefits.”
House Bill 1391 also establishes a restrictive definition of fraud that requires proof of explicit intent, something critics say adds an unreasonable burden of proof on the defrauded veteran.
Veterans Readiness and Employment Improvement and Accountability Act
The Veterans Readiness and Employment Improvement and Accountability Act addresses VR&E issues including reducing caseloads for VR&E counselors and a lack of counselor training. Veterans Education Success also notes, “Many veterans have told us that VR&E counselors steer them away from top colleges and towards low-quality online programs.”
One veteran, described as 100% disabled, “was denied approval for an Ivy League business school. The counselor dismissed it as too expensive despite its clear career advantages and the likelihood of higher earnings. Veterans find the approval process arbitrary, as the same schools are approved for others.”
This is not putting veterans first at the VA, no matter what VA Secretary Doug Collins says.
What Veteran Education Success Says
The act seeks to modernize the electronic case management infrastructure. The Veteran Education Success statement to Congress recommends that this legislation establish housing allowance parity, since Chapter 31 VR&E participants currently receive lower monthly housing stipends than standard Post-9/11 GI Bill students, a gap that does not keep pace with the current cost of living.
Establishing the Veterans Economic Opportunity and Transition Administration Act
The Establishing the Veterans Economic Opportunity and Transition Administration Act addresses oversight failures of the Veterans Benefits Administration. The Veteran Education Success testimony on this bill shows communication breakdowns at the VA that directly affect student housing stability.
In 2023, a severe IT system flaw delayed GI Bill housing allowance payments for more than 280,000 student veterans. The resulting backlog was so severe that the agency had to work with the Department of the Treasury to print and mail paper checks to some 4,000 veterans.
The Department of Veterans Affairs compounded these failures by deactivating the GI Bill public helpline entirely during a recent federal government shutdown.
The proposed legislation would address these systemic failures by putting VA education and transition programs into a separate, dedicated administration. According to Vets Education Success testimony, “This measure proposes the creation of a Veterans Economic Opportunity and Transition Administration within the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), to be overseen by a new Under Secretary.”
“The purpose of this new Administration would be to manage and administer various programs to provide benefits to veterans, their dependents, and survivors. The bill would, if passed into law, “require the Secretary to provide an annual report to Congress on the programs administered by the Under Secretary for Veterans Economic Opportunity and Transition.”
What Veteran Education Success Says
While we do not know if a new Administration would do a better job administering the GI Bill, experience clearly shows that the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) continues to struggle with its competing missions of delivering disability compensation benefits and a wide variety of economic opportunity benefits, such as the GI Bill.”
At press time, none of the proposed legislation has been signed into law. These bills are under review in committee; this is a developing story.
RELATED:
- Post-9/11 GI Bill Overview
- How To Get Your Post-911 GI Bill Benefits
- Transferring Your GI Bill to Spouse and Dependents
- Colleges with the Highest GI Bill BAH Rates
About the author
Joe Wallace is a 13-year veteran of the United States Air Force and a former reporter/editor for Air Force Television News and the Pentagon Channel. His freelance work includes contract work for Motorola, VALoans.com, and Credit Karma. He is co-founder of Dim Art House in Springfield, Illinois, and spends his non-writing time as an abstract painter, independent publisher, and occasional filmmaker.
