Ranking Members Markey, Warren Fight to Roll Back Trump Administration Attacks on Access to Capital for American Small Businesses

Letter (PDF)

(Washington, October 15) - Ranking Member Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking Committee sent a letter to Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) Jonathan Gould and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Chairman Travis Hill to oppose a proposed rule that would harm American small businesses. The proposed rule would undermine Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) goals that require banks to invest in their local communities. These changes would leave small businesses, especially those in underserved areas, with less access to the capital and resources they need to start and grow their businesses.

Banks often invest in their local communities by providing financial assistance to Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs). CDFIs use the assistance to provide critical access to capital for small businesses across the country and are more effective than traditional lenders in reaching underserved communities, including low-to-moderate income (LMI), minority, and rural communities. In Fiscal Year 2024 alone, CDFIs supported 109,000 businesses with more than $2.3 billion in financing, and between 2018-2022, around 20% of total CDFI financing went to small businesses. Ranking Members Markey and Warren emphasize that the proposed rule would undermine the CRA, reduce investment in CDFIs and small businesses, and let big banks off the hook.

In the letter, the lawmakers wrote, "Congress enacted the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) nearly half a century ago to address inequities in access to credit. The CRA requires financial institutions to serve their entire community, including LMI areas, and specifically incentivizes institutions to reinvest in the areas in which they operate. It has helped small businesses obtain capital, including by incentivizing banks to partner with and invest in Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs)."

The lawmakers continued, "Unfortunately, despite the CRA's role in directing investment to small businesses and communities, including LMI areas, the Trump administration has proposed a rule that would be especially harmful to small businesses. It would undermine reporting on small business loans, decrease lending to small businesses, particularly in LMI areas, and decrease new markets tax credit (NMTC) investments used to invest in small businesses."

The lawmakers concluded, "Small businesses are the backbone of the U.S. economy and they deserve equitable access to long-term capital and counseling. Given the fact that the CRA has been a critical tool for such purposes by incentivizing banks to invest in local communities and small businesses, the Trump administration should be looking to retain and strengthen the CRA rather than undermine its core objectives."

The lawmakers highlighted the following points in their letter:

• Under the proposed rule, there would be up to an 85 percent reduction in community development investment and lending, cutting off billions in funding for small businesses.
• In addition to the bank size threshold increases proposed in the rule, the rule also considers defining small banks as those with assets under $10 billion and large banks as those with assets of more than $30 billion as potential alternatives. Under current regulations, a small bank is defined as having under $412 million in assets and a large bank as having more than $1.649 billion in assets.
• • Large banks must engage in small business reporting and meet specific community development requirements. Drastic increases to bank size thresholds means that thousands of banks are no longer subject to such requirements. As a result, an increase to $10 billion for small banks and $30 billion for large banks jeopardizes $26 billion in community development loans and $267 million in investments.

Permalink: https://www.sbc.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2026/10/ranking-members-markey-warren-fight-to-roll-back-trump-administration-attacks-on-access-to-capital-for-american-small-businesses