The VA home-loan bills still moving through Congress

A law that has already passed takes years to undo. A bill that has not passed can still be changed by the people who have to vote on it. That is the whole reason this page exists separately from the rest of the record.

Everything below is quoted from the text of the bill itself, read at the Government Publishing Office. Not from a press release, and not from a summary. Where a sponsor's announcement and the bill text disagree, the bill text is what is on this page.

One word appears throughout and it is worth defining once. Statutory means it is written in a law that Congress passed. A rule that is statutory can only be changed by Congress. A rule that VA wrote for itself can be changed by VA, in an afternoon, without asking anyone. That difference decides who you have to persuade, so it is worth knowing which kind of rule you are looking at. The three levels a rule can sit on sets this out in full.

H.R. 9237, the Take Care of America's Veterans Act, was introduced on June 10, 2026. It bundles a large number of separate veterans bills into one package. It has six titles, covering compensation, education and economic opportunity, health care, organization, memorial affairs, and community care.

DOCUMENTED FACT S206

One provision sits directly in this crisis. Section 104(b) rewrites the loan fee table at 38 U.S.C. 3729. Verbatim, it strikes "0.50" and inserts "1.42" in one row of that table, and strikes "0.50" and inserts "1.0" in another.

DOCUMENTED FACT S206

That is the fee a veteran pays to use the loan benefit, and for one kind of loan it goes from half a percent to just under one and a half percent. On a $325,000 loan the difference is roughly three thousand dollars, paid at closing or added to the balance.

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A separate part of the same section, 104(c), adds one percentage point to the fee for certain members of the Guard and Reserve.

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The reason this belongs on a foreclosure site is narrow and it should stay narrow. Refinancing is one of the ways a household lowers a payment it is struggling with. Raising the cost of the refinance raises the cost of that exit. It is the same loan program and the same families.

PROJECT ANALYSIS

The fee increase is one section of this bill. Another section of the same bill is what is being offered in return for it. Section 101 changes the rule on concurrent receipt.

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Concurrent receipt means a military retiree draws both their retired pay and their VA disability compensation. Without it, federal law reduces the retired pay by the amount of the disability compensation, so the veteran is paid once for two separate things. Retirees with 20 or more years of service already have it. Those who were medically retired with fewer than 20 years, because they were injured, do not.

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Section 101 extends it to that group, and then puts a ceiling on it. The bill adds a new subparagraph headed, verbatim, "Disability retirees with less than 20 years of service", and pays such a member "the lesser of" what they are actually owed, or an amount calculated "as such base pay and multiplier would be computed if the member had 20 years of service".

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A veteran who was injured badly enough to be retired at eight years is paid as though they had served twenty. The more severe the injury, the earlier the career ended, and the further that ceiling sits below what the rule would otherwise pay. It takes effect on January 1, 2027.

PROJECT ANALYSIS S206

These two sections are in the same bill, and that is the reason for putting them beside each other. Section 104(b) raises what a veteran pays to use the home loan benefit. Section 101 is the benefit offered alongside it. Read together, the bill asks disabled veterans to pay more to keep or refinance a home, and offers a capped version of a long-sought benefit in exchange.

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One naming caution, because it causes real confusion. Section 101 is often called the Major Richard Star Act. There is a separate standalone bill of that same name, H.R. 2102, and it has no ceiling at all. The standalone Major Richard Star Act, H.R. 2102, has a discharge petition with 217 signatures as of September 15, 2026, one short of the 218 needed to trigger the discharge process. That is procedural progress, not House passage or a guaranteed floor vote. S250 The two carry the same name and treat the same veterans differently, so any statement about the Major Richard Star Act has to say which one it means.

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H.R. 9237 pays for itself in part by charging veterans more to use the home loan benefit. That is set out above. What is less well known is that a fully funded alternative was formally offered, in committee, and rejected on a recorded vote.

On June 23, 2026, the House Committee on Rules met on the bill. Mr. McGovern moved to make in order an amendment by Representative Takano that would have struck the entire text of H.R. 9237 and replaced it with the Major Richard Star Act, paid for, in the committee's own words, "using Department of Defense funds from the Republicans' One Big Beautiful Bill Act as the offset."

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It was defeated, 4 to 8. The committee printed the full roll.

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Which means the choice was not between charging veterans more and doing nothing. A funded alternative existed, it was written down, it was put to a vote, and it lost.

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Two different votes, three weeks apart

These are easy to run together and they are not the same event. The committee vote above was June 23. On July 16, 2026 the full House voted on a motion to recommit, which is a last chance to send a bill back before final passage. That one failed 210 to 211, with 10 members not voting.

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One word is worth being careful with. The defense money in question is often described as "unobligated". That word is not in the Rules Committee record. It comes from Senator Blumenthal's statement of July 16, which describes "a small portion of the nearly $100 billion in unobligated and unspent funds appropriated to the Department of Defense in H.R. 1." It is a member's description of the money, and this record cites it as that rather than as the committee's language.

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What it does. The Sharri Briley and Eric Edmundson Veterans Benefits Expansion Act raises two benefits and pays for them with two fees. It adds a supplemental monthly allowance of $833.33 for veterans already receiving an aid and attendance allowance, and it raises dependency and indemnity compensation by one percent at the next cost-of-living adjustment and half a percent at the one after. Both take effect December 1, 2026.

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And what pays for them. Section 3 raises the fee on an Interest Rate Reduction Refinance Loan from 0.50 to 1.42 percent and the fee on a loan assumption from 0.50 to 1.0 percent, and moves the date those fees expire from June 9, 2034 to September 30, 2036. The refinance loan is the instrument a veteran uses to lower a payment they can no longer afford.

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Section 3 was rewritten before it passed, and the heading is the giveaway

The bill as introduced did something different, to a different part of the law. Its Section 3 amended the waiver itself, the subsection that says a fee may not be collected from a veteran receiving disability compensation. It would have allowed the fee to be collected, from enactment through September 30, 2035, in two situations, quoted from the bill:

"(A) for a subsequent loan (as such term is defined in subsection (b)); and (B) from a veteran who is receiving compensation (or who, but for the receipt of retirement pay or active service pay, would be entitled to receive compensation) on the basis of a disability rated at 70 percent or less."

H.R. 6047 as introduced, Section 3, amending 38 U.S.C. 3729(c)

That provision is not in the version that passed. The passed Section 3 amends a different subsection, the loan fee table at 3729(b)(2), and changes only the two rates and the expiry date above. No section of the passed bill amends 3729(c), so the waiver for disabled veterans survives.

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The section still carries the heading it had when it did the other thing: "Modification of waivers of fees collected for housing loans." A heading that describes a provision the text no longer contains is what a late removal looks like from the outside. This record does not know who removed it or why, and does not guess.

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Paid for, for exactly as long as the scoring window lasts

At the Rules Committee on May 19, the bill's supporters said it was fully compliant with the House rule against increasing the national debt. Inside the ten-year window that is correct. The Congressional Budget Office scores the bill as reducing the deficit by $42 million over 2026 to 2036.

The same page of the same estimate answers two further questions. Asked whether the bill increases net direct spending in any of the four consecutive ten-year periods beginning in 2037, CBO answers greater than $2.5 billion. Asked whether it increases on-budget deficits in those periods, CBO answers greater than $5 billion.

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Both statements are true and they are not in conflict. The benefits are permanent. The fees expire in 2036. The bill balances inside the window Congress scores and stops balancing the year after it.

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Read the last three columns. The fee brings in roughly $230 to $260 million a year, and then triples. Those are the years the expiry extension bought, years in which the government was not going to collect this fee at all. More than half of the whole $4.0 billion comes from them. Against that, the estimate puts $3.07 billion into dependency and indemnity compensation and $1.01 billion into the new disability allowance.

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The exemption is exactly as old as the fee

The waiver that H.R. 6047 as introduced would have narrowed is often described as a longstanding courtesy. It is not a courtesy. It was written into the fee at the moment the fee was created, by the same Congress, in the same law.

The Department's own legislative history of the program says so.

"In 1982, the charging of a one half of one percent funding fee was reinstituted by Public Law 97-253. The fee was to be collected on all VA guaranteed loans with the proceeds deposited into the Treasury of the United States as miscellaneous receipts. Individuals receiving VA compensation, or those who would receive it but for the receipt of military retired pay and surviving spouses of veterans who died from a service-connected disability are currently exempt from payment of the funding fee."

Department of Veterans Affairs, Legislative History of the VA Home Loan Guaranty Program

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And the objection came first. On March 23, 1982, this committee's Subcommittee on Housing and Memorial Affairs held a hearing on the loan program at which the fee was opposed. Public Law 97-253 enacted it later that year, with the exemption in it.

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One detail in that passage is the argument that is still being had. The 1982 proceeds went to the Treasury "as miscellaneous receipts", which is to say into general revenue rather than into the loan program. The Mortgage Bankers Association objected to precisely that in 1982, and objects to it now. Its statement to this committee in March 2026 restates the principle unchanged: fee revenue "should only be used for the benefit of the VA's Home Loan Program itself."

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This is not a new dispute that arrived with this bill. It is the same dispute, about the same fee, in the fourth decade of being had. What is new is the proposal to remove the exemption that settled it the first time.

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The bind that a veterans organisation described before it happened to them

At the December 2025 hearing on H.R. 6047, the American Legion put one sentence into the record that explains the shape of everything that followed.

"Until veterans' benefits are exempt from austerity measures, all VSOs will be required to choose between interests that conflict with one another."

The American Legion, statement for the record, December 3, 2025

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Six months later that is exactly the choice they were given. H.R. 9237 bundles more than sixty separate veterans bills into one package, including several that these organisations had campaigned for over many years. On June 29, 2026, twenty-three veterans organisations signed a coalition letter urging Congress to pass it.

DOCUMENTED FACT S206

They signed it while one part of the same package remained the most contested provision in it. Section 108 concerns disability ratings for tinnitus and sleep apnea, and it is the provision that drew organised opposition, including from organisations inside the coalition. The House vote was pulled on July 16, 2026.

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This record does not call that a reversal, and it is not one. An organisation that opposes one provision and supports the package containing it has not changed its mind. It has been handed a package. That is the mechanism the Legion named in December, working exactly as it said it would.

PROJECT ANALYSIS S206

The reason this belongs on a page about a home loan fee is that the fee is in the same bundle. Section 104(b) raises the refinance fee. Section 108 changes ratings. Neither could be voted on separately, and that is a choice somebody made about how to write the bill, not a fact about what veterans organisations believe.

PROJECT ANALYSIS S206

What a "second home" actually is, according to the agency that runs the program

The offset in the bill as introduced applied to a veteran's subsequent use of the loan, and it has been described throughout as a fee on a second home. At the December 3, 2025 hearing the Department was asked what a subsequent use actually is, and answered under oath.

"Subsequent use, what it really means is, it is just the use after your initial use. That could be an Active Duty servicemember who used the benefit and due to a change in duty station, now is being asked to move and is looking to purchase a home."

Stephanie Li, Assistant Director, Loan Guaranty, Veterans Benefits Administration

Asked directly whether it was about a vacation home, she said it was not, and gave the reason: "We have a requirement in statute that veterans certify to their intent to occupy the residence as a home." Asked to confirm it was statutory, she answered: "Correct."

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So a second use of this benefit is a family moving, and by law it has to be a home they will live in. The most common reason a service member uses it twice is that the military told them to move. The description that made the provision sound like a fee on a holiday property does not survive the Department's own testimony.

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Where the 31,500 comes from, and the comparison inside it

This record carries two figures that are often confused: about 90,000 veteran borrowers seriously behind, and about 31,500 in active foreclosure. They are not two counts. The second is a share of the first.

The National Consumer Law Center set out the arithmetic in its written statement to this committee on March 26, 2026, citing ICE Mortgage Monitor data for the end of 2025: "about 35 percent of seriously delinquent VA loans were in active foreclosure, compared to 30 percent for the GSEs and 25 percent for FHA." Thirty-five percent of ninety thousand is about thirty-one and a half thousand.

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And the comparison is the finding, not the count. 35 percent for VA. 30 for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. 25 for the Federal Housing Administration. A veteran who falls seriously behind on a VA-guaranteed loan is more likely to end up in foreclosure than a borrower in the same position with any other federally backed mortgage. That is not this project's inference. It is what the consumer advocates told the committee, with the instrument named.

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The same statement records why the numbers are hard to check in the first place. "VA does not publish loan performance data as FHA does." Everything above rests on privately purchased data because the public version does not exist.

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The Department endorsed every part of the bill except this one

At the December hearing the Department of Veterans Affairs submitted a written statement addressing both bills before the committee section by section. It supported the compensation increases: "VA supports the intent of section 2(a)" and "VA supports the intent of section 2(b)." On the other bill it wrote "VA supports section 3 of the bill, subject to amendments" and "VA supports the goal."

On the offset it wrote one sentence and made no recommendation: "The Department is reviewing section 3 of this bill and looks forward to working with Congress on further refinement."

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Asked how many veterans the provision would reach, the Department could not say. On the question of how many would be newly subject to the fee: "We are still finalizing the numbers on that. I do not have those numbers for you today." On its effect on the loan program's solvency: "That is the information we are still evaluating."

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The bill was ordered reported ten weeks later, on February 12, 2026. This record does not know whether those numbers were produced before the vote, and does not assume they were not.

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The mortgage industry made this same objection in 1982

Charging veterans a fee on this loan to pay for something else is not a new idea, and neither is the objection to it. In its written statement to this committee in March 2026, the Mortgage Bankers Association quoted its own testimony from forty-four years earlier, on a proposal to add half a percentage point to the same program.

"this fee could impose an additional financial burden upon veterans who wish to become homeowners at a time when record high interest rates already make this goal a difficult one."

Mortgage Bankers Association, to this committee's housing subcommittee, March 23, 1982, quoted in its own statement of March 26, 2026

Its position in 2026 is the same position, and it says so: "Our veterans today, just as in the early 1980's, face one of the most challenging housing affordability environments in decades." It asked the committee to "remove or substantially modify the proposed fee increases and extensions."

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The industry's position on this fee has not moved in forty-four years. It also stated the principle it has held throughout: "the use of any revenue generated by VA home loan funding fees should only be used for the benefit of the VA's Home Loan Program itself." That is the whole argument about an offset, made by the lenders rather than by anyone advocating for borrowers.

PROJECT ANALYSIS S100

A fee that is financed is not a fee that is paid once

Most veterans do not pay the funding fee at closing. They add it to the loan, because the money to pay it up front is the same money they needed for the move. From that moment it stops being a fee and becomes principal, and it is charged interest for the life of the mortgage like everything else in the balance.

The Veterans of Foreign Wars put a number on that in writing. In its statement to this committee on December 3, 2025, the VFW calculated the effect on an average VA loan of about $398,000: the fee adds more than $13,000 to the starting balance, and, in its words, "roughly $27,000 in total costs over the life of the loan, much of which is interest on the fee itself."

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The VFW added the part that is easy to miss. A borrower who finances the fee begins the mortgage more than three percent underwater and needs nearly two more years to reach the point where the home is worth more than the loan. For a family already moving under orders, that is two more years in which selling means writing a cheque.

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Disabled American Veterans reached the same shape of answer independently. On a typical $400,000 loan, DAV put the cost at more than $12,000 paid up front, or more than $25,000 financed across a thirty-year mortgage.

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And the same point was made at the Rules Committee. On May 19, 2026, at 1:04:52 in the hearing video, Ranking Member Mark Takano put the increase at roughly two and a half to three thousand dollars in additional fees, and at 1:05:04 said that the cost doubles once the veteran pays interest on the fee. Three sources, two of them veterans service organizations writing for the official record, arrive at the same mechanism.

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The Chairman described the same fee in a different unit, and both descriptions are honest. At the December hearing he put it at about $35 a month. A monthly increment and a lifetime total are the same money. Which unit is used is the argument, and this record gives both rather than picking one.

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The last time Congress did this, it set an end date

Raising the home loan fee to pay for a veterans benefit is not new. Congress did it in 2019, in the Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act, to fund benefits for Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange offshore. The fee went up on January 1, 2020, from 2.15 to 2.30 percent on a first use and from 3.30 to 3.60 percent on a subsequent one.

And it was written to come back down. The increase ran for a fixed period, after which the rates were scheduled to fall to 1.40 percent on a first use and 1.25 percent on a subsequent one. The borrowers who paid it were paying for a defined stretch of years, not permanently.

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That is the difference the Ranking Member pressed at the Rules Committee, and it is the reason the comparison to 2019 does not settle the argument the way it is usually offered. At 1:03:52 he said this increase is permanent and will cost money to bring back down, and at 1:04:30 that the 2020 proposal returned to existing levels after a few years. He also said, at 1:04:09, that the 2020 bill he was being compared to passed the House and never became law.

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He made one further claim, and this record reports it as his claim rather than adopting it. At 1:06:20 he said that Democrats and Republicans agreed, in both chambers, that the Blue Water Navy increase would be the last time Congress used home loan fees to pay for veterans benefits, and that Congress was then supposed to find other ways. This project has not found a document that records such an agreement. It is a member's account of an understanding, said on the record, and it is set out here as exactly that.

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What is documented, and needs no agreement to be true: the 2019 increase carried an end date and the 2026 rate changes do not. The fee's expiry moves out to September 30, 2036 and the two new rates have no scheduled return at all.

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Section 5 opens the door wider and charges the newcomers more

Section 5 carries its own name, the Home Affordability for Guard and Reserve Act. It makes a person eligible for a VA home loan after 14 days of active duty plus entry level and skill training, where the requirement had been far longer, and it applies to service performed on or after September 11, 2001.

It also prices them separately. A new subparagraph applies the fee table to that borrower, in the bill's words, "by adding 1.00 to the percentage in the table." A full extra percentage point, for the group with the shortest service.

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One bill brings a new population into this program and raises the price of the program's refinancing lifeline at the same time. Both halves are Section 3 and Section 5 of the same twelve pages. And people still serving are inside this cohort: active duty service members are eligible for the VA home loan, which the Rules Committee record notes is not widely understood.

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The vote, which is on the record by name

Roll Call 191, May 21, 2026. This one matters to record separately, because the other home loan bill on this page passed by voice vote with nobody recorded. On this bill every member is on the record.

Thirty Democrats voted yes and three Republicans voted no. The bill was received in the Senate on June 2, 2026, read twice, and referred to the Committee on Veterans' Affairs. That is where it is now, and it is the reason this section is on this page rather than in the history.

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DOCUMENTED FACT If you receive compensation for a service-connected disability, you pay no funding fee at all. 38 U.S.C. 3729(c): a fee "may not be collected under this section from a veteran who is receiving compensation." Surviving spouses of veterans who died of a service-connected disability are exempt as well. Nothing below applies to anyone in that position, and it is the first thing to check.

DOCUMENTED FACT For everyone else the fee is higher the second time. The table at 38 U.S.C. 3729(b)(2) sets a zero-downpayment purchase at 2.15% on a first use and 3.30% on a subsequent use. On a $300,000 loan that is $6,450 against $9,900. The difference is $3,450, and on a $400,000 loan it is $4,600.

DOCUMENTED FACT A subsequent use is any use after the first one. Asked what the term means at the December 3, 2025 hearing, the Department answered under oath that it is "just the use after your initial use". It is not a term about second homes. The section above shows what happens when that fee is financed rather than paid at closing.

PROJECT ANALYSIS A family that loses a home and later buys again is on their second use. The higher rate is not a penalty for the foreclosure and nothing in the statute says it is. It is the ordinary rule, and foreclosure is one of the ways an ordinary rule starts applying to you. The route back in costs more than the route in did.

PROJECT ANALYSIS This is the part the public argument leaves out, on both sides. The fee debate has been about the rate and about who should pay for what. It has not been about the exemption line, and the exemption line is where the loss actually happens. A veteran who is compensated pays nothing. A veteran who is not, and who is foreclosed on, pays more on the way back. Section 3 of H.R. 6047 would have moved compensated veterans across that line, allowing the fee to be collected from them from enactment through September 30, 2035.

Fee table and waiver read from 38 U.S.C. 3729(b)(2) and 3729(c) on 2026-09-06. The subsequent-use definition is the Department's own hearing answer, already on this page.

H.R. 9404, the VA Home Loan Navigator Act, was introduced on June 23, 2026 by Rep. Veronica Escobar with Rep. Jack Bergman. It would have VA provide support services to veterans using the home loan benefit.

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Six members have signed it, and four of them are Republicans. Rep. Escobar introduced the bill on June 23, 2026, with Rep. Jack Bergman of Michigan signing the same day. Rep. Cory Mills of Florida joined on June 25. Rep. J. Luis Correa of California and Rep. Pete Sessions of Texas joined on June 29. Rep. Jim Costa of California joined on July 2.

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That matters beyond this one bill. A claim that veterans losing their homes is a question that splits along party lines has to get past this list first. What the record shows is a bill carrying members of both parties, and one action since: the referral to the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs on the day it was introduced.

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Two of the services it names are the ones missing when a family falls behind. The bill provides for "counseling relating to loss mitigation options and foreclosure prevention" and "assistance navigating loan servicing matters".

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And the independence is written into the text rather than left to good intentions. A counsellor "shall not receive any compensation, referral fee, or other remuneration, directly or indirectly, from a mortgage lender or mortgage servicer", and "shall act solely as an independent, neutral intermediary; and may not act as an agent of, or on behalf of, any mortgage lender, servicer, or real estate professional".

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What that would mean in practice: when a mortgage company tells a family what its options are, the family would have somewhere else to ask. Right now the company explaining the options is the company that benefits from which option is chosen.

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For the home loan chapter of the law, Congress defined veteran to cover more than people who have finished serving. The definition is at 38 U.S.C. 3701(b), and it includes, quoting the statute, "an individual serving on active duty."

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Two things follow from that, and both are already on this page in another form.

A currently serving family can be in this crisis. Someone on active duty, in the Guard or in the Reserve can hold a VA-guaranteed loan, fall behind on it, and face the same shortage of options as anyone else on this site. Nothing about still wearing the uniform changes the loan.

And the surcharge above lands on them by name. The provision that adds one percentage point to the fee for certain members of the Guard and Reserve is charging people this same definition brought into the program.

PROJECT ANALYSIS S243 The reading of what the two facts mean together. The definition and the surcharge are each documented.

This site says veterans throughout, because that is the word the law uses. Read it as the law defines it, not as it sounds.

DOCUMENTED FACT When the VA Home Loan Affordability Act was rolled out on April 29, 2026, the Committee's own release carried a supporter list. Its words: "The VA Home Loan Affordability Act is supported by the following key stakeholders." Two mortgage companies are quoted by name, Rocket Mortgage and Freedom Mortgage, each welcoming the effort to modernize the program and reduce costs. S233

There is nothing improper in that, and this page does not suggest otherwise. Companies comment on legislation that affects them, committees collect those comments, and a bill that lowers closing costs is a reasonable thing for a lender to welcome. It is ordinary legislative practice.

PROJECT ANALYSIS The observation is about what the supported bill covers. Its provisions are about the front of the process: paperwork, appraisals, closing costs, the speed of getting a veteran into a loan. The full breakdown is on the policy page, and the finding there is that not one provision reaches what happens after a family falls behind: not foreclosure, not loss mitigation, not servicer compliance, and not the partial claim program Congress passed in 2025. S233

Set the two halves of the program side by side and the asymmetry is in the public record, not in anyone's motives. The origination side has a modernisation bill with named industry supporters on a committee page. The default side has no comparable bill, and no comparable list.

What this does not claim

No motive is attributed to either company, to any sponsor, or to the Committee. Supporting one bill is not opposing another, and neither company is recorded anywhere as having taken a position on foreclosure or loss-mitigation legislation. The absence of a position is not a position.

This is not a claim that the two halves were traded off against each other. Nothing in the record shows that, and this project does not assert it. What the record shows is which half attracted a bill with endorsements and which half did not, on the same committee, in the same period.

Two dates here are easy to merge and must not be. The bill was introduced on April 27, 2026, which is the date on the bill print. The rollout announcement carrying the supporter list is dated April 29, 2026. Different events, two days apart.

DOCUMENTED FACT The sponsor's one-pager describes the provision this way: "This bill would also cap the closing costs fees placed on veterans up to 1.5%, and cap seller concessions at 6% to match FHA standards for nonveterans." S234

DOCUMENTED FACT The bill text, at section 2(d)(3), adds a new paragraph to the closing-cost conditions and reads: "the seller fees actually paid by the veteran do not exceed six percent of the outstanding balance of the loan." S234

Those describe two different things. A seller concession is money the seller puts toward the buyer's costs. It is help arriving at the veteran, and a cap on it is a limit on how much help a seller may give. The operative sentence is not about that. It limits fees paid by the veteran, which is money moving the other way.

PROJECT ANALYSIS This is recorded because the two documents are the sponsor's own and anyone can hold them side by side. A one-pager is a summary and summaries compress. Nothing here says the bill is bad or that anyone misdescribed it on purpose, and the closing-cost cap in the same subsection is a real gain this site has said so about elsewhere. What is worth knowing is simply that the text and the summary of this provision do not match, and only the text would govern.

The rest of what the one-pager supplies is background, and it is attributed rather than adopted. It states that the Department has identified 436 counties across 31 states without enough certified appraisers for current demand, and that certification now takes three to five years against twelve to eighteen months for a state licence. Those figures are the sponsor's, this project has not verified them independently, and they are the reason the bill is mostly about appraisals. S234

Three dates, and they are not the same date

The committee bill print carries a drafting stamp of April 23, 2026. The bill was introduced on April 27, 2026, which is the date on the print filed with the Government Publishing Office. The rollout announcement carrying the supporter list is April 29, 2026.

Drafted, introduced, announced. Three events, three dates, six days. This record keeps them apart on purpose, for the same reason it keeps the date of a foreclosure sale apart from the date on the deed and the date the deed was recorded: collapsing them produces a timeline that looks wrong to anyone who checks it.

H.R. 8532, the VA Home Loan Affordability Act, introduced April 27, 2026. Eight provisions about cost and paperwork when a veteran gets into a loan. One of them caps closing costs, which is a real gain. None of them reaches what happens after a family falls behind. The full breakdown is on the policy page.

H.R. 9379, the Affordable Homes for Veterans Act of 2026, introduced June 18, 2026. It sets a 45-day deadline for a mortgage company to decide a loan assumption, limits what the company may say to discourage one, and orders an Inspector General audit of whether companies complied. It is the accountability design that loss mitigation does not have. The full breakdown is on the policy page.

Read together with H.R. 9404, the pattern is worth naming. Congress this year has written a processing deadline, an audit, a limit on what a servicer may say, and free independent counselling on foreclosure. All four exist in drafted text. None of them has yet been pointed at the families already in default.

PROJECT ANALYSIS S199 S200 S207

None of these bills is law. Each is still in front of the people who will vote on it, which is the only reason any of it is worth a phone call. The Capitol switchboard is (202) 224-3121.