{"id":14433,"date":"2025-10-15T00:31:40","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T00:31:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/gop-senators-discouraged-by-trumps-community-development-finance-firings\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T00:31:40","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T00:31:40","slug":"gop-senators-discouraged-by-trumps-community-development-finance-firings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/gop-senators-discouraged-by-trumps-community-development-finance-firings\/","title":{"rendered":"GOP Senators discouraged by Trump\u2019s community development finance firings"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Two senior Republican senators said Tuesday they strongly support the Treasury Department\u2019s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund after the Trump administration moved to eviscerate<\/a> the program by firing all of its staff.<\/p>\n

The elimination of employees at the CDFI Fund on Friday was part of the larger reduction-in-force orchestrated by Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought. A letter to fired employees said their termination was necessary to implement the abolishment of the entire CDFI program, which enjoys strong bipartisan support.<\/p>\n

Senate Community Development Finance Caucus co-chair Mike Crapo<\/a> (R-Idaho) told Blue Light News Tuesday that he \u201cwas discouraged to see the actions taken to [RIF] the employees, and I\u2019m hopeful that we can get that turned around.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sen. Mike Rounds<\/a> (R-S.D.), who\u2019s consistently been vocal in his support of the fund, said he remains \u201cfully supportive\u201d of the CDFI Fund and that \u201cthe CDFIs do an excellent job in particular areas\u201d and he\u2019s \u201cseen it firsthand in South Dakota.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fund awards federal dollars through a public-private partnership to CDFIs, which are community banks, credit unions and other financial institutions that lend and provide other types of capital to communities and markets traditionally underserved by the larger banking industry. The CDFI Fund was designed to increase the accessibility of financial services and products.<\/p>\n

Rounds said the quickest way to fix the situation at the fund is to \u201cget a continuing resolution in place and move forward\u201d and re-open the government.<\/p>\n

South Dakota CDFIs received $13.3 million from the fund in 2024, making the state a top recipient per capita.<\/p>\n

Crapo would not comment whether he had spoken with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent or the White House on the matter but said that \u201cCongress has a role anytime Congress chooses, it can take some action.\u201d He added that he and his caucus co-chair, Sen. Mark Warner<\/a> (D-Va.), \u201care going to work together to try to get this fixed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Warner, on a press call Tuesday, said he\u2019s working with Crapo to try to send a bipartisan letter from the caucus like they did in March after the initial executive order requesting the fund be eliminated to the fullest extent allowed under the law, to \u201cshow strong, bipartisan pushback.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additionally, Warner said he sent Bessent a letter regarding the unexpected firings on the CDFI Fund\u2019s entire staff and that he expected to hear a response back soon. Neither he nor Crapo saw the RIFs coming, Warner said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt least my office and Crapo\u2019s office, the first reaction [to the CDFI Fund RIFs] was shock\u201d and that \u201cit appears maybe this didn\u2019t come from Treasury, it appears that it came from the OMB. I think this goes against the law,\u201d Warner said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two senior Republican senators said Tuesday they strongly support the Treasury Department\u2019s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund after the Trump administration moved to eviscerate the program by firing all of its staff. The elimination of employees at the CDFI Fund on Friday was part of the larger reduction-in-force orchestrated by Office of Management and Budget […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14433\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}