Why it Matters
Veterans face compounding problems accessing benefits and housing, and Congress is moving to address three distinct pain points in a House Veterans Affairs Committee hearing scheduled for June 25. The hearing will examine bills and proposals aimed at modernizing the Veterans Affairs (VA)'s phone system, making home loans more affordable, and protecting GI Bill benefits from fraud—each reflecting documented failures in how the VA serves the population it's supposed to support.
The Big Picture
The VA's customer service infrastructure is broken. A VA Office of Inspector General (OIG) report found that in 13 of 15 VA medical facilities reviewed, key call data including caller hang-up rates, answer rates, and average wait times were not being tracked. The report also found nearly one million of the 2.1 million veteran call attempts seeking specialty care were not properly tracked over a 12-month period.
H.R. 5992, the Stuck On Hold Act, would require the VA to inform callers of their estimated hold time and offer a callback option if the projected wait exceeds ten minutes. The bill also directs the VA Secretary to issue guidance to reduce average wait times to 10 minutes or less across all covered lines. The VA would complete callback system upgrades within one year of enactment, using existing resources rather than new funding.
H.R. 8532, the VA Home Loan Affordability Act, aims to ease the burden by capping closing fees at 1.5 percent of the loan amount and seller fees at 6 percent. The bill also removes third-party verification requirements for lender fees and allows the VA to waive appraisal requirements for refinanced loans. It expands condo access by removing certain approval requirements for VA-guaranteed loans on condominiums. The VA would review and update debt-to-income ratio requirements every two years and modernize its IT systems for administering housing loans within 180 days of enactment.
The VA Education Oversight Improvement Act, a discussion draft, targets a separate vulnerability: veterans losing GI Bill benefits to scams and fraud. Veterans have previously lose benefits through high-pressure sales tactics and too-good-to-be-true promises from predatory schools.
Veterans Education Success has called for schools to be required to demonstrate completion and post-education economic outcomes as a condition of continued GI Bill eligibility, and for school recruiters to be held to a fiduciary duty to tell the truth. Congress directed the VA to coordinate with the Department of Education through formal data-sharing agreements regarding the GI Bill Comparison Tool in February 2026.
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