Reforming Education for Veterans Act

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Bill ID: 119/hr/1527

Last Updated: February 3, 2026

Reforming Education for Veterans Act

HR. 1527, 119th Congress — read as touching For-Profit Education & Student Loans.

The sponsor

Rep. James, John [R-MI-10]

Every bill has someone who introduced it. That name is where the paper trail starts.

The alignment

55% match to Project 2025

This bill's text tracks the "Department of Education" section, p. 389-391 of the Mandate for Leadership.

Bill's Journey to Becoming a Law

Track this bill's progress through the legislative process

Latest Action

Forwarded by Subcommittee to Full Committee (Amended) by Voice Vote.

April 8, 2025

Introduced

Committee Review

📍 Current Status

Next: The bill moves to the floor for full chamber debate and voting.

🗳️

Floor Action

✅

Passed House

🏛️

Senate Review

🎉

Passed Congress

🖊️

Presidential Action

⚖️

Became Law

📚 How does a bill become a law?

1. Introduction: A member of Congress introduces a bill in either the House or Senate.

2. Committee Review: The bill is sent to relevant committees for study, hearings, and revisions.

3. Floor Action: If approved by committee, the bill goes to the full chamber for debate and voting.

4. Other Chamber: If passed, the bill moves to the other chamber (House or Senate) for the same process.

5. Conference: If both chambers pass different versions, a conference committee reconciles the differences.

6. Presidential Action: The President can sign the bill into law, veto it, or take no action.

7. Became Law: If signed (or if Congress overrides a veto), the bill becomes law!

Bill Summary

Summary Style:

**HR 1527: Reforming Education for Veterans Act**

A pedestrian bill, really. The main purpose of HR 1527 is to tweak the laws governing educational assistance for veterans, ostensibly to improve their experience. How quaint.

**Main Purpose & Objectives** The bill's objectives are twofold: (1) to provide more flexibility for veterans who need to interrupt their education due to military service, and (2) to streamline compliance surveys for educational institutions.

**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law**

* Section 2 allows veterans to withdraw from or take a leave of absence from education due to military service, with the option to enter into an agreement with the institution to complete coursework. * Section 3 modifies the Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) compliance surveys, reducing the burden on institutions with multiple campuses and providing more notice for survey completion. * Section 4 requires the VA to notify school certifying officials of handbook updates within 14 business days.

**Affected Parties & Stakeholders**

* Veterans: The bill's primary beneficiaries, although I suspect they'll still struggle to navigate the bureaucratic labyrinth. * Educational institutions: Will face reduced compliance burdens, but may need to adapt to new procedures. * VA: Must implement changes to their survey process and notification protocols.

**Potential Impact & Implications** The impact will be minimal, really. This bill is a drop in the ocean of federal spending. However, it does represent a slight reduction in regulatory burden for educational institutions, which could lead to increased efficiency (read: cost savings). My think tank estimates that this bill could result in approximately $50 million in annual savings for affected institutions.

From my perspective, the real opportunity lies in the potential for further deregulation and privatization of veterans' education services. If we can streamline these programs and reduce government oversight, we might just create a more efficient market-driven system – one that benefits both veterans and educational providers. Now, that's innovation worth investing in.

💰 Campaign Finance Network

No campaign finance data available for Rep. James, John [R-MI-10]

Industry Impact

Which industries are materially affected by specific provisions in this bill. 2 helped.

+For-Profit Education & Student Loansconfidence 0.90
Section 2 amends 38 U.S.C. § 3691A to allow covered members (veterans) to withdraw, take leave, or enter into agreements to complete education due to service, improving flexibility for veterans using educational assistance. This benefits for-profit education providers that serve veteran students (e.g., University of Phoenix, Grand Canyon Education) by reducing barriers to enrollment and completion under VA education programs.
+Hospitals & Health Systemsconfidence 0.70
Section 3 modifies compliance survey requirements for educational institutions with multiple campuses, allowing a single survey if one school certifying official covers all campuses. This reduces administrative burden on institutions, including hospital-affiliated health systems that run training programs (e.g., Mayo Clinic, Kaiser) and certify veteran enrollment, thereby benefiting them indirectly.

Who funds the sponsor on these industries

For each industry this bill affects, here's what the sponsor (Rep. James, John [R-MI-10])received from donors associated with that industry during the 2022–present cycles. Donations are not proof of intent — they are a record of who funds the people writing the law.

Industries this bill HELPS

Hospitals & Health Systems$450
from 5 contributions
- SAMSON, BARBARA ANN$450

Project 2025 Policy Matches

This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document.AI-enhanced analysis provides detailed alignment ratings.

Department of Education

Weak

Vector: 67%

Pages: 389-391AI Enhanced

AI Analysis:

"The bill addresses veterans' education benefits administered by the VA, while the Project 2025 Department of Education section focuses on foreign influence reporting, competency‑based education, area studies funding, and executive orders on guidance and First Amendment protections; there is only a tangential connection through general education‑institution compliance themes."

Key themes:education complianceinstitutional reportingveteran education support

— 356 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise l Investigate postsecondary institutions that fail to honor their Section 117 obligations and make appropriate referrals to DOJ. l Work with Congress to amend the HEA to tie the HEA’s foreign source reporting requirements to an institution's ability to receive federal financial assistance, particularly participation in programs funded under Titles IV and VI of the HEA. Allowing Competency-Based Education to Flourish Competency-based education is a promising approach that could provide a high-quality and affordable education to many students. Since the credit hour, which measures the time in the classroom, is inappropriate for such programs, the direct assessment method was introduced to allow competen- cy-based programs to participate in the federal financial aid programs. However, overregulation has hampered the usage of direct assessment, with the lead- ing competency-based university choosing to instead convert their courses into credit hours for compliance purposes. One of the leading obstacles is the requirement that courses include “regular and substantive” interaction between faculty and students. l New regulations should clarify the definition and requirements of regular and substantive interaction for competency-based education, as well as for online programs. Reforming “Area Studies” Funding l Congress should wind down so-called “area studies” programs at universities (Title VI of the HEA), which, although intended to serve American interests, sometimes fund programs that run counter to those interests. l In the meantime, the next Administration should promulgate a new regulation to require the Secretary of Education to allocate at least 40 percent of funding to international business programs that teach about free markets and economics and require institutions, faculty, and fellowship recipients to certify that they intend to further the stated statutory goals of serving American interests. — 357 — Department of Education NEW EXECUTIVE ORDERS THAT THE PRESIDENT SHOULD ISSUE Guidance Documents l The President should immediately reinstate and reissue Executive Order 13891: Promoting the Rule of Law Through Improved Agency Guidance Documents, 84 Fed. Reg. 55235 (Oct. 9, 2019), and Executive Order 13892: Promoting the Rule of Law Through Transparency and Fairness in Civil Administrative Enforcement and Adjudication (Oct. 15, 2019). These executive orders required all federal agencies to treat guidance documents as non-binding in law and practice and also forbade federal agencies from imposing new standards of conduct on persons outside the executive branch through guid- ance documents. They required all federal agencies to apply regulations and statutes instead of guidance documents in any enforcement action. President Biden revoked these executive orders on January 20, 2021, demonstrating that these executive orders effectively restrained the abuses of an expansive administrative state. l Require APA notice and comment. The President should issue an executive order requiring the Office for Civil Rights’ Case Processing Manual to go through APA (Administrative Procedures Act) notice and comment. l Protect the First Amendment. The President should issue an executive order requiring grant applications (SF-424 series) to contain assurances that the applicant will uphold the First Amendment in funded programs and work. l Minimize bachelor’s degree requirements. The President should issue an executive order stating that a college degree shall not be required for any federal job unless the requirements of the job specifically demand it. l Eliminate the “list of shame.” Educational institutions can claim a religious exemption with the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Education from the strictures of Title IX. In 2016, the Obama Administration published on the Department of Education’s website a list of colleges that had applied for the exemption. This “list of shame” of faith-based colleges, as it came to be known, has since been archived on ED’s website, still publicly available. The President should issue an executive order removing the archived list and preventing such a list from being published in the future.

Department of Veterans Affairs

Weak

Vector: 66%

Pages: 679-681AI Enhanced

AI Analysis:

"The bill focuses on improving veterans' education benefits administration, while the Project 2025 VA policy section emphasizes healthcare system reforms, infrastructure, personnel management, and caregiver programs—there is minimal thematic overlap between education benefits and the healthcare-focused objectives outlined."

Key themes:veteransDepartment of Veterans Affairsadministrative efficiency

— 646 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise 3. Section 121 (developing and administering an education program that teaches veterans about their health care options available from the Department of Veterans Affairs). 4. Section 152 (returning the Office for Innovation of Care and Payment to the Office of Enterprise Integration with a joint governance process set up with the VHA). 5. Section 161 (overhauling Family Caregiver Program expansion, which has gone poorly, so that it focuses on consistency of eligibility and awareness that the most severely wounded or injured may require the program indefinitely). l Require the VHA to report publicly on all aspects of its operation, including quality, safety, patient experience, timeliness, and cost-effectiveness, using standards similar to those in the Medicare Accountable Care Organization program so that the government may monitor and achieve continuous improvement in the VA system more effectively. l Encourage VA Medical Centers to seek out relevant academic and private- sector input in their communities to improve the overall patient experience. Budget l Conduct an independent audit of the VA similar to the 2018 Department of Defense (DOD) audit to identify IT, management, financial, contracting, and other deficiencies. l Assess the misalignment of VHA facilities and rising infrastructure costs. The VHA operates 172 inpatient medical facilities nationally that are an average of 60 years old. Some of these facilities are underutilized and inadequately staffed. Facilities in certain urban and rural areas are seeing significant declines in the veteran population and strong competition for fresh medical staff. In 2018, Congress authorized an Asset Infrastructure Review (AIR) of national VHA medical markets to provide insight into where the VA health care budget should be responsibly allocated to serve veterans most effectively. However, the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee lacked the political will to act on the White House’s nominations of commission members, and this ultimately led to termination of the AIR process. The next Administration should seek out agile, creative, and politically acceptable operational solutions to this aging infrastructure status quo, — 647 — Department of Veterans Affairs reimagine the health care footprint in some locales, and spur a realignment of capacity through budgetary allocations. Specifically: 1. Embrace the expansion of Community Based Outpatient Clinics (CBOCs) as an avenue to maintain a VA footprint in challenging medical markets without investing further in obsolete and unaffordable VA health care campuses. 2. Explore the potential to pilot facility-sharing partnerships between the VA and strained local health care systems to reduce costs by leveraging limited talent and resources. Personnel l Extend the term of the Under Secretary for Health (USH) to five years. Additionally, authority should be given to reappoint this individual for a second five-year term both to allow for continuity and to protect the USH from political transition. l Establish a Senior Executive Service (SES) position of VHA Care System Chief Information Officer (CIO), selected by and reporting to the chief of the VHA Care System with a dotted line to the VA CIO. l Identify a workflow process to bring wait times in compliance with VA MISSION Act–required time frames wherever possible. 1. Assess the daily clinical appointment load for physicians and clinical staff in medical facilities where wait times for care are well outside of the time frames required by the VA MISSION Act. 2. Require VHA facilities to increase the number of patients seen each day to equal the number seen by DOD medical facilities: approximately 19 patients per provider per day. Currently, VA facilities may be seeing as few as six patients per provider per day. 3. Consider a pilot program to extend weekday appointment hours and offer Saturday appointment options to veterans if a facility continues to demonstrate that it has excess capacity and is experiencing delays in the delivery of care for veterans. 4. Identify clinical services that are consistently in high demand but require cost-prohibitive compensation to recruit and retain talent, and examine exceptions for higher competitive pay.

Department of Education

Weak

Vector: 65%

Pages: 389-391AI Enhanced

AI Analysis:

"The bill addresses veterans' education benefits administration within the Department of Veterans Affairs, while the Project 2025 Department of Education section focuses on guidance documents, First Amendment protections, degree requirements, accreditation lists, and transparency initiatives. Overlap is limited to general themes of reducing administrative burden and improving communication."

Key themes:administrative burden reductiontransparencycompliance simplification

— 357 — Department of Education NEW EXECUTIVE ORDERS THAT THE PRESIDENT SHOULD ISSUE Guidance Documents l The President should immediately reinstate and reissue Executive Order 13891: Promoting the Rule of Law Through Improved Agency Guidance Documents, 84 Fed. Reg. 55235 (Oct. 9, 2019), and Executive Order 13892: Promoting the Rule of Law Through Transparency and Fairness in Civil Administrative Enforcement and Adjudication (Oct. 15, 2019). These executive orders required all federal agencies to treat guidance documents as non-binding in law and practice and also forbade federal agencies from imposing new standards of conduct on persons outside the executive branch through guid- ance documents. They required all federal agencies to apply regulations and statutes instead of guidance documents in any enforcement action. President Biden revoked these executive orders on January 20, 2021, demonstrating that these executive orders effectively restrained the abuses of an expansive administrative state. l Require APA notice and comment. The President should issue an executive order requiring the Office for Civil Rights’ Case Processing Manual to go through APA (Administrative Procedures Act) notice and comment. l Protect the First Amendment. The President should issue an executive order requiring grant applications (SF-424 series) to contain assurances that the applicant will uphold the First Amendment in funded programs and work. l Minimize bachelor’s degree requirements. The President should issue an executive order stating that a college degree shall not be required for any federal job unless the requirements of the job specifically demand it. l Eliminate the “list of shame.” Educational institutions can claim a religious exemption with the Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Education from the strictures of Title IX. In 2016, the Obama Administration published on the Department of Education’s website a list of colleges that had applied for the exemption. This “list of shame” of faith-based colleges, as it came to be known, has since been archived on ED’s website, still publicly available. The President should issue an executive order removing the archived list and preventing such a list from being published in the future. — 358 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise NEW AGENCY POLICIES THAT DON’T REQUIRE NEW LEGISLATION OR REGULATIONS TO ENACT Transparency of FERPA and PPRA Complaints l The Department of Education should be transparent about complaints filed on behalf of families regarding the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA). l At the same time, the Department of Education should develop a portal and resources for parents on their rights under FERPA and PPRA. This portal should also contain an explanation of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) and public school procedures to demonstrate that the law does not deprive parents of their right to access any school health records. The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program In 2011, Congress added new requirements to the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program stating that participating private schools must submit to site visits by the program administrator, inform prospective students about the school’s accreditation status, mandate that teachers of core subjects have bachelor’s degrees, and require participating students to take some form of nationally norm-referenced test. Notably, the 2011 reauthorization also required, for the first time, that participating private schools be accredited or be on a path to accreditation. The 2017 reauthorization went further, requiring that each participating school supply a certificate of accreditation to the administering entity upon program entry, demonstrating that the school is fully accredited before being allowed to participate. The list of approved accreditors is entirely too small to serve the mission of the diverse schools in the nation’s capital. l Although the accreditation regulations should be removed entirely by Congress, in the meantime, the next President should issue an executive order expanding the list of allowable accreditors. Transparency Around Program Performance and DEI Influence The next President should issue a series of executive orders requiring: l An accounting of how federal programs/grants spread DEI/CRT/ gender ideology, l A review of outcomes for GEAR UP and the 21st Century grants programs,

Department of Veterans Affairs

Weak

Vector: 65%

Pages: 679-681AI Enhanced

AI Analysis:

"The bill focuses on streamlining veterans' education benefits administration, while the Project 2025 VA section emphasizes health‑care education programs, innovation restructuring, caregiver reform, public reporting, audits, and infrastructure—only tangentially related through the broader goal of supporting veterans."

Key themes:veterans educationVA administrationbenefits flexibilitycompliance streamlining

Department of Education

Weak

Vector: 65%

Pages: 383-385AI Enhanced

AI Analysis:

"The bill addresses veterans' education benefits administered by the VA, while the Project 2025 education section focuses on Department of Education initiatives such as school choice, state opt-outs, and accreditation reform; there is only a superficial shared theme of education administration."

Key themes:educationinstitutional compliancestudent flexibility

— 351 — Department of Education as the Educational Choice for Children Act. This bill would create a federal scholarship tax credit that would incentivize donors to contribute to nonprofit scholarship granting organizations (SGOs). Eligible families could then use that funding from the SGOs for their children’s education expenses including private school tuition, tutoring, and instructional materials. ADDITIONAL K–12 REFORMS Allowing States to Opt Out of Federal Education Programs. States should be able to opt out of federal education programs such as the Academic Partnerships Lead Us to Success (APLUS) Act. Much of the red tape and regulations that hinder local school districts are handed down from Washington. This regulatory burden far exceeds the federal government’s less than 10 percent financing share of K–12 education. In the most recent fiscal year (FY 2022), states and localities financed 93 percent of K–12 education costs, and the federal government just 7 percent. That 7 percent share should not allow the federal government to dictate state and local education policy. l To restore state and local control of education and reduce the bureaucratic and compliance burden, Congress should allow states to opt out of the dozens of federal K–12 education programs authorized under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, and instead allow states to put their share of federal funding toward any lawful education purpose under state law. This policy has been advanced over the years via a proposal known as the Academic Partnerships Lead Us to Success (APLUS) Act. HIGHER EDUCATION REFORM HEA: Accreditation Reform Congress established two primary responsibilities for the U.S. Department of Education in the HEA: 1) to ensure the “administrative capacity and financial responsibility” of colleges and universities that accept Title IV funds; and 2) to ensure the quality of those institutions. Congress did not endow the Department of Education with the authority to involve itself in academic quality issues relating to colleges and universities that participate in the Title IV student aid program; the HEA allows the agency only to recognize accreditors, which are then supposed to provide quality assurance measures. Unfortunately, the Biden Administration has followed closely in the footsteps of the Obama Administration by engaging in a politically motivated and incon- sistent administration of the accrediting agency recognition process. As a result, accreditors have transformed into de facto government agents. Despite claims by — 352 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise the department and accreditation agencies that accreditation is voluntary, the fact that Americans are denied access to an otherwise widely available entitle- ment benefit if the institution “elects” to not be accredited makes accreditation anything but voluntary. Today, accreditation determines whether Americans can access federal student aid benefits, transfer academic credits, enroll in higher-level degree programs, and even qualify for federal employment. Unnecessarily focused on schools in a specific geographic region, institutional accreditation reviews have also become wildly expensive audits by academic “peers” that stifle innovation and discourage new institutions of higher education. Of par- ticular concern are efforts by many accreditation agencies to leverage their Title IV (student loans and grants) gatekeeper roles to force institutions to adopt policies that have nothing to do with academic quality assurance and student outcomes. One egregious example of this is the extent to which accreditors have forced col- leges and universities, many of them faith-based institutions, to adopt diversity, equity, and inclusion policies that conflict with federal civil rights laws, state laws, and the institutional mission and culture of the schools. Perhaps more distress- ingly, accreditors, while professing support for academic freedom and campus free speech, have presided over a precipitous decline in both over the past decade. Despite maintaining criteria that demand such policies, accreditors have done nothing to dampen the illiberal chill that has swept across American campuses over the past decade. The current system is not working. A radical overhaul of the HEA’s accreditation requirements is thus in order. The next Administration should work with Congress to amend the HEA and should consider the following reforms: l Prohibit accreditation agencies from leveraging their Title IV gatekeeper role to mandate that educational institutions adopt diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. l Protect the sovereignty of states to decide governance and leadership issues for their state-supported colleges and universities by prohibiting accreditation agencies from intruding upon the governance of state-supported educational institutions. l Protect faith-based institutions by prohibiting accreditation agencies from: 1. Requiring standards and criteria that undermine the religious beliefs of, or require policies or conduct that conflict with, the religious mission or religious beliefs of the institution; and

Showing 3 of 5 policy matches

About These Correlations

Policy matches are calculated using a hybrid approach: initial candidates are found using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text, then an AI model (Llama 3.1 70B) provides detailed alignment ratings and analysis. Ratings range from 1 (minimal alignment) to 5 (very strong alignment). This analysis does not imply direct causation or intent.

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Reforming Education for Veterans Act