1. United States
2. Alaska
3. Letter

Subject: Reinstate the CDFI Fund and Protect Alaska’s Communities I am writing as your constituent to express my deep alarm over the mass federal layoffs carried out during the shutdown — in particular, the effective elimination of the Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund. This decision is not a pause or a furlough. It is the wholesale dismantling of a nearly 30-year bipartisan program that has delivered opportunity to communities that banks and traditional lenders consistently overlook. The CDFI Fund finances credit unions, community loan funds, and nonprofits that make possible everything from affordable housing to small business lending, child care centers, grocery stores in food deserts, and health clinics in rural areas. Here in Alaska, this matters profoundly. Native and rural communities depend on CDFI-backed organizations for opportunities that would otherwise not exist: • Spruce Root, a Native CDFI in Southeast Alaska, offers Fast Start Loans up to $50,000. In 2023, it deployed 10 such loans across 7 communities, supporting Native-owned businesses like Trickster Company. • Cook Inlet Lending Center (CILC) in Anchorage provides small business loans and partners with the Anchorage Community Land Trust to help Indigenous entrepreneurs open businesses through the “Set Up Shop” program. • Alaska Growth Capital (AGC), co-owned by Bristol Bay Native Corporation, supports small-scale economic development in rural Alaska. • Tongass Federal Credit Union (TFCU), Alaska’s only depository CDFI, has used federal grant funds to establish financial “microsites” in remote villages, bringing essential financial services to areas otherwise unserved. All of these efforts are supported by the U.S. Treasury’s CDFI Fund, especially through Native Initiatives. Without that funding and certification, these programs — and the opportunities they create — are at risk. This decision jeopardizes billions in approved or pending projects across the country, and in Alaska it threatens the fragile ecosystems of entrepreneurship and community investment in places where options are already limited. Eliminating the CDFI Fund during a shutdown is unprecedented, and it undermines decades of bipartisan work to strengthen rural and low-income communities. I urge you to: 1. Press Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the Office of Management and Budget to rescind these layoffs immediately upon reopening. 2. Reinstate and protect the CDFI Fund in its entirety. 3. Publicly affirm the importance of CDFIs, especially those serving Alaska’s Native and rural communities. Alaska needs these institutions. They are lifelines for small businesses, Native entrepreneurs, and families across the state. Ending them is not just bad policy — it is cruel, and it will cost livelihoods. Please act swiftly to restore the CDFI Fund and ensure Alaskans are not left behind.