A vulnerable Republican congressman is scrambling away from questions about his role in ending a program meant to keep veterans from losing their homes.
Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI), who is locked in a tight re-election race against Democrat Rebecca Cooke, led the push to end a low-interest program that helped struggling veterans keep their homes, but NPR reported that he's now refusing to answer questions about the fallout.
An NPR investigation drew on previously unreported Department of Veterans Affairs data, and it found that more than 15,000 veterans who had their VA-backed mortgages modified after a financial hardship saw their monthly payments rise by at least $150. More than 700 saw increases of $1,000 or more.
NPR found that 63 percent of veterans who received a loan modification were hit with a payment increase. For loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which cover most of the U.S. mortgage market, the figure was 2 percent.
The increases followed the Trump administration’s decision to end the Veterans Affairs Servicing Purchase (VASP) program on May 1, 2025. VASP rolled missed payments into new mortgages at a 2.5 percent interest rate. Without it, many struggling veterans had only one option: a modified loan at today’s much higher rates.
“If the Biden version of VASP was allowed to continue, I fear that the home loan will not exist in the future for my fellow veterans,” Van Orden said at a March 2025 hearing.
House Republicans announced the program’s end before the VA did, even though it was ended administratively with no vote in Congress.
“Today, the Trump administration rightfully put an end to VA’s VASP program,” Van Orden and Rep. Mike Bost (R-IL), chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said in a joint release at the time.
The mortgage industry and housing groups had explicitly warned the administration not to end VASP before a replacement was in place.
“This was a foreseeable outcome of abruptly ending a program without a replacement in place,” said Matthew Douglas of the Housing Policy Council, which represents the nation’s largest mortgage companies. “It’s a mathematical certainty that borrowers are going to have those kind of shocking payment increases.”
Van Orden did write a bill creating a replacement, the Partial Claim Program, and Congress passed it with bipartisan support. But the VA took more than 13 months to announce the details, and most lenders still don’t offer it. Veterans who took modified loans in the gap won’t be helped by it.
Foreclosures on VA loans rose to a 10-year high after VASP ended, according to industry data.
Neither Van Orden nor Bost responded to NPR’s repeated requests for comment. Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA), the committee’s top Democrat, called the findings “the height of insanity.”
“These are veterans that are already financially distressed — they were already in trouble,” Takano said.
A VA spokesperson said the home loan program “is based on the premise that while Veterans may need some assistance, they must generally be able to make their mortgage payments.”
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