Washington — Daniel Gorman knows what it’s like to return from war, and he wants to help fellow veterans come home, too: The former sailor turned New York National Guardsman is finishing a graduate degree in social work at Fordham University.

But the Department of Veterans Affairs has thrown his fall semester into chaos by underpaying him without notice or explanation — making him one veteran among potentially tens of thousands on the GI Bill who have watched their bank accounts dwindle because of the agency’s ongoing technology failures.

“I can’t afford rent. I can’t afford groceries. It’s a lot of emotional strain and aggravation,” said Gorman, an Iraq War veteran. He added: “I’m supposed to graduate in May 2019, but I don’t know if that’s feasible if this persists.”

The problems began this summer when VA’s benefit processing system buckled under complex new formulas for GI Bill students. As a result, scores of veterans waited weeks or months to be paid, and have fallen victim to the agency’s decades-old technology that advocates and lawmakers have warned for months would do precisely what it did — fail.

Now some veterans still are struggling to overcome financial straits after they took out loans or put expenses on credit cards. And advocates are concerned veterans are taking on financial burdens on top of other challenges, such as mental health and balancing school with family.

The House Veterans’ Affairs Committee on Thursday raked VA for “massive failures” as agency officials struggled to articulate what progress they made since the problems materialized in August.

Paul Lawrence, VA’s top benefits official, told lawmakers it was a “mistake” to provide earlier estimates for completing the fixes, and said that VA would not provide another timetable for when its technology issues would be resolved.

“Dr. Lawrence, not very encouraging,” Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, said. “You failed to account for the scope of the problem and minimized the problem … not having a deadline going forward is a recipe for disaster if I ever heard one.”

VA has sought to downplay the issue, saying it has returned to a normal workload processing GI Bill benefit claims. But the number of veterans waiting more than 60 days for their payments — 1,000 — ballooned 10 percent since Wednesday, according to updated figures the agency presented to lawmakers.

VA has said it focused on addressing older claims first.

About 10,000 student veterans have waited one or two months to receive payments, VA said.

Other student veterans, like Gorman, have been underpaid. He was set to receive $631 a month while studying full time. Just $269 arrived on Nov. 1 — a hard hit in New York City.