The Trump administration is ending a Department of Veterans Affairs program started by the Biden administration intended to help keep veterans struggling to pay their mortgages in their homes.

The VA will stop accepting new participants for what's called the Veterans Affairs Servicing Purchase program, or VASP, starting May 1, the department confirmed Friday.

"This change is necessary because VA is not set up or intended to be a mortgage loan restructuring service," VA press secretary Pete Kasperowicz said in a statement that added the VASP program was "unilaterally created by the Biden administration and lacks congressional authority."

***

Under VASP, the VA purchased delinquent loans from holders and became the primary loan servicer, providing borrowers a stable payment plan at a fixed rate of 2.5% for the remainder of their loan.

The program helped more than 17,000 veterans stay in their homes, according to the VA.

But congressional Republicans loathed the program because, they argued, the VA becoming the loan holder put taxpayer dollars at unacceptable risk. The VA purchased about $5.5 billion worth of loans through the program, according to the department.

"We -- along with many of our colleagues -- had serious concerns about the impact VASP would have on not only the future of VA's home loan program, but the mortgage lending business as a whole," House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Mike Bost, R-Ill., and Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., who chairs the committee's economic opportunity subcommittee, said in a joint statement celebrating the end of the program.