WASHINGTON—Democrats in the House are calling on Treasury Scott Bessent to exempt the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI) from President Trump’s executive order that largely sought to shut down the fund.

While the funds have already been appropriated by Congress, the executive order sought to reduce employees and operations to the point where it would be all but impossible to carry out the disbursement of those funds. 

The 87 members of the House Financial Services Committee, which include Ranking Member Maxine Waters (D-CA) requests Bessent to exclude the CDFI Fund from the budget cuts. 

“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 letter reads. “These CDFIs leverage a relatively small amount of federal funds to provide financial access to underserved communities that traditional financial institutions ignore.”

Secretary’s Statement Cited

The letter cites a statement made by Secretary Bessent that the Trump administration has appreciation for the role the CDFI Fund plays providing capital to small business.

“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 letter states.