Today, Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, released information on day 14 of the Trump-Republican shutdown—which Trump and Republicans initiated because of their refusal to negotiate with Democrats to protect health care for millions of Americans. Today’s release highlights how the Trump Administration is using the government shutdown to mass fire public servants at key financial services agencies, including at the Treasury Department.

ILLEGAL: Attempting to Eliminate the ENTIRE Community Development Financial Institutions Fund Staff at Treasury

As part of the Trump Administration’s mass firing of hard-working government employees, the Trump White House on Friday attempted to illegally terminate all employees at the Treasury Department's Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund— a Congressionally mandated program created to expand access to capital in underserved communities. Ranking Member Waters immediately slammed this dangerous move as “unprecedented and unconstitutional.”

For more than 30 years, the CDFI Fund has enjoyed broad bipartisan support for its work delivering essential resources through community banks, credit unions, and loan funds to communities historically overlooked by traditional financial institutions, including those in rural, native, suburban, and urban communities.

What makes this illegal? The President has no authority to eliminate a Congressionally mandated program. In fact, Congress has already provided hundreds of millions of dollars for the Fund to deliver across the country. Without staff, none of that funding can be delivered which will effectively halt critical services to:

• Low-income and underserved communities
  
• Small and minority-owned businesses
  
• Affordable housing developers and renters
  
• First-time homebuyers
  
• Native communities and rural areas
  

Unfortunately, this latest firing is consistent with Trump’s war on the CDFI Fund. In March, Trump signed an Executive Order to gut the CDFI Fund. After the backlash, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent issued a statement affirming that the Administration recognizes the important role that the CDFI Fund and CDFIs play in expanding access to capital and providing technical assistance to communities across the United States, saying “CDFIs are a key component of President Trump’s commitment to supporting Main Street America in the pursuit of job growth, wealth creation, and prosperity.”

Yet the Administration’s actions last week directly contradict these commitments and serve as a betrayal to the bipartisan work that has been done over several years to strengthen the Fund, and importantly, the thousands of communities that depend on the CDFI Fund to thrive.

For more on the CDFI Fund and its impact, check out this fact sheet.

###