Elijah Cummings Working With Florida Congressman to Help Veterans at Colleges, Universities – Florida Daily
Despite engaging in a heated war of words with President Donald Trump in recent days, U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Mary., is also working with a Republican congressman from Florida in offering a bill to help veterans attending colleges and universities.
Cummings paired up with U.S. Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., to unveil the “Safeguarding Student Veterans Act” last week. The bill held student veterans using the Post 9/11 GI Bill “by increasing coordination between the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Education” through pushing the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs “to better understand and track the risks that certain schools pose to empower veterans when deciding on which schools to attend.”
Yoho’s office offered some insight on why the North Florida Republican was backing the legislation.
“Currently, schools facing serious financial or compliance problems are only required to share information with the Department of Education, not the Department of Veterans Affairs,” Yoho’s office noted. “The Department of Veterans Affairs must be in a better position to protect student veterans using the Post 9/11 GI Bill. For example, when ITT Technical Institute closed its doors, about 7,000 of its 40,000 students were on the GI Bill and when Education Corporation of America suddenly closed, nearly 4,000 student veterans using the GI Bill were impacted.”