May, 2020
Washington – As both a veteran and a taxpayer who cares about the public fisc, I am delighted to see Congress, on a bipartisan basis, step up to overturn Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos's ill-advised rule making it difficult for defrauded veterans and others to get student loan cancellations.
Somehow, she thinks it's the veterans who are defrauding the for-profit schools rather than the other way around. The truth of the matter is outlined well in the New York Times, which tells the story of a defrauded student at ITT Tech.
Now if the President will only sign the necessary resolution, H.J. Res. 76.
Veterans Education Success (VES), a veterans' advocacy organization I have long supported, deserves much credit for bringing dozens of other veterans' organizations together to attempt to get this insult to veterans overturned.
Taxpayer watchdog organizations should also take note. For-profit schools that exploit veterans are endemic purveyors of waste, fraud, and abuse in Department of Education programs.
The corruption that results in fraud and waste is explained in great detail in Dan E. Moldea's new book, Money, Politics, and Corruption in U.S. Higher Education. In it he interviews Rodney Lipscomb, a former dean at ITT Tech who blew the whistle on the school, as well as the incomparable David Halperin, to whom every federal taxpayer owes a debt of thanks for his long battle against for-profit school corruption.
