WASHINGTON — President Trump on Friday vetoed a bipartisan decision to overturn new rules that considerably tighten entry to federal scholar mortga
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Friday vetoed a bipartisan decision to overturn new rules that considerably tighten entry to federal scholar mortgage forgiveness, siding with Training Secretary Betsy DeVos over veterans organizations that say her guidelines will hurt veterans bilked by unscrupulous for-profit faculties.
The veto will enable stringent guidelines for college students in search of mortgage forgiveness to take impact on July 1. The principles toughen standards established under the Obama administration for student borrowers seeking to prove their colleges defrauded them and to have their federal loans erased. Even if some borrowers can show they were victims of unscrupulous universities, they could be denied relief unless they can prove their earnings have been adversely affected.
The resolution “sought to reimpose an Obama-era regulation that defined educational fraud so broadly that it threatened to paralyze the nation’s system of higher education,” Mr. Trump’s veto statement said. “The Department of Education’s rule strikes a better balance, protecting students’ rights to recover from schools that defraud them while foreclosing frivolous lawsuits.”
The resolution put Mr. Trump in a difficult political position. The veto saves Ms. DeVos from an embarrassing rebuke by her boss, but it puts the president at odds with dozens of veterans groups that helped persuade 10 Republican senators to vote to overturn a major domestic policy of the Trump administration. Veterans groups said the rule failed to protect military service members who have long been the targets of predatory tactics by colleges because of their lucrative G.I. benefits.
“President Trump’s veto of my bipartisan bill to help our veterans was a victory for Education Secretary DeVos and the fraud merchants at the for-profit colleges,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, who sponsored the resolution in the Senate. “My question to the president: In four days, did you forget those flag-waving Memorial Day speeches as you vetoed a bill the veterans were begging for?”
Several groups, led by Veterans Education Success, began running advertisements on Fox News programs urging Mr. Trump to sign the resolution, which Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent to the White House last week.
The news of the veto left groups despondent.
Only hours beforehand, the American Legion, a nonpartisan group that represents two million members, pleaded with the president to sign the resolution, saying that Ms. DeVos’s rule would make it “nearly impossible” for cheated veterans to use it.
Ms. DeVos’s changes raised the bar for borrower relief claims, requiring applicants to individually prove that a school knowingly misled them and, even if students were bilked, that they were financially harmed by the deception. They also set a three-year deadline on claims.
“Veterans have been aggressively targeted due to their service to our country,” wrote the legion’s national commander, James W. Oxford, in a statement on Friday. “Student veterans are a tempting target for certain online and for-profit schools to mislead with deceptive promises, while offering degrees and certificates of little-to-no value.”
Democrats vowed to fight to override the president’s veto, but rounding up two-thirds of the House and Senate will be almost impossible.
Representative Susie Lee, Democrat of Nevada, who sponsored the resolution in the House, said that “the fight for our students and veterans is far from over.”
“It’s clear the 2019 rule will weaken both protections for students and oversight of shady schools, while forcing taxpayers to foot the bill for the fraudulent actions of a few bad actors,” she said.