House Democrats are urging Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to exempt the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund from a recent executive order directing it to scale back operations.
President Trump issued an executive order in March directing the CDFI Fund and other government programs to reduce their staffing and operations to the minimum level needed to carry out their statutory obligations. In a letter first reported by Politico, House Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and 87 House Democrats asked Bessent to exclude the CDFI Fund from the cuts. The lawmakers said they reject the premise that anything about the fund and the CDFIs it supports is “unnecessary.”
“For more than 30 years, across Republican and Democratic administrations, the CDFI Fund has been a bipartisan success, providing grants, technical assistance, and other support to community banks, credit unions and loan funds across the country that are certified as CDFIs,” the lawmakers said. “These CDFIs leverage a relatively small amount of federal funds to provide financial access to underserved communities that traditional financial institutions ignore.”
Bessent has said the Trump administration understands the important role the CDFI Fund plays in expanding access to capital and promoting Main Street business development. The lawmakers asked him to “clear up this confusion” concerning his remarks and the executive order.
“To the extent the president agrees with your recent statement and wants to support CDFIs, the appropriate thing to do would be to promptly update the executive order to exempt the CDFI Fund from its application… and work with Congress to strengthen and expand the work of the CDFI Fund,” the lawmakers said.
