Why we’re suing to release small business funds Congress already approved

Your local coffee shop owner, pet groomer, corner store, doctor, and plumber make up the more than 36 million small businesses that create almost half of our nation’s jobs and shape the neighborhoods where we live. Soaring inflation is making it increasingly difficult for entrepreneurs to survive. Americans and leaders from both parties agree that we need to invest in programs that support Main Street small businesses. So why are hundreds of millions of dollars being withheld from one of the country’s most important small business lending programs?

The Community Development Financial Institutions Fund is a Treasury program that capitalizes community lenders. It enjoys bipartisan support and the fund is a great example of a working public-private partnership, leveraging $8 in private sector investment for every $1 in public funding.

These investments are found in nearly every American community — red and blue districts, rural counties and dense urban neighborhoods, and Native communities. Such institutions exist in all 50 states and nearly every congressional district in the country. Since Congress created it in 1994 with bipartisan support, the fund has helped channel billions of dollars each year into small businesses that mainstream banks routinely turn away — not as a subsidy, but as a bet on entrepreneurs who pay it back and build local wealth in the process.

That is why we, the leaders of two organizations that support hundreds of community lenders and the small........

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