In light of the fact that Donald Trump recently announced he intends to increase the U.S.’s military spending by $54 billion, a federal program totaling just $258 million sounds fairly inconsequential. But the Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund, which awards loans to institutions dedicated to promoting development and financial inclusion in disadvantaged areas, is a vital economic resource for low-income American communities . It costs each American just 79 cents per year.

“These are precisely the communities President Trump seeks to help, including hollowed out inner-city neighborhoods and economically distressed rural communities.”

In 2016, the $233.5 million in CDFI Fund appropriations translated into a total of $2.1 billion worth of investments and loans across the U.S.; as a result, the money resulted in the creation of 28,000 jobs. But in the Trump administration’s proposed new budget, submitted to Congress on March 16, the CDFI’s funds will be cut by $210 million, leaving it just $19 million to continue operation of its old programs, but not make any new grants.

The CDFI fund was launched by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in 1994 specifically to direct funds to disadvantaged communities. It does so by providing grants to CDFIs, which are private financial institutions that offer affordable lending to low-income communities that often cannot access lending resources offered through mainstream financial institutions due to a lack of solid credit history or an unwillingness to sign up for a bank account, which, because of late-payment and overdraft fees, are often seen as an impossible expense. There are over 1,000 CDFIs across the U.S., and though the grants that the CDFI Fund awards to CDFIs are relatively small, CDFIs are able to leverage those dollars to bring in private investors and create substantial funding streams that go directly into city and neighborhood-level projects.

While CDFIs operate in a wide range of areas across the U.S., the majority (67%) work in urban areas, and benefit low-income communities of color–ironically, the very communities that Trump claimed to want to help over the course of his campaign. Cutting the program that funds them, said CDFI Coalition President James R. Klein in a statement, would harm “precisely the communities President Trump seeks to help, including hollowed out inner-city neighborhoods and economically distressed rural communities.”

The CDFI Fund offers two types of loans to CDFIs: financial assistance awards and technical assistance awards. The latter are much smaller–up to $125,000–and the CDFIs applying for them don’t have to go through a certification process. For financial assistance awards, though, CDFIs have to apply for certification through the CDFI Fund; the certification process ensures that the CDFI is dedicated to supporting community development in a particular market. Those loans can total up to $2 million, and the CDFI availing of them must match its CDFI Fund award dollar-for-dollar with loans from private lending institutions; CDFIs partner with a variety of banks and nonprofits to round out the loans that they funnel into communities.

These loans have brought about a wide range of projects: A Los Angeles-based CDFI, Genesis LA, funded a transitional home for troubled youth; HOPE Enterprise Corporation, a Mississippi-based CDFI, connected people whose homes had been destroyed by Hurricane Katrina with mortgage-financing and home-recovery consulting services; Rural Community Assistance Corporation, a Sacramento CDFI, loaned a husband-and-wife tamale business $125,000 to refinance their loans and cover the cost of kitchen supplies.

Ellis Carr is the president and CEO of Capital Impact Partners, a Washington, DC-based CDFI with offices in Detroit and Oakland. He tells Co.Exist that when his company received a $2 million award from the CDFI Fund in 2014, it used that loan as a base to bring on board private and philanthropic partners, including JPMorgan Chase, and create a $30 million fund “that invested in Detroit at a time when everybody was taking a huge step back and no one was really providing long-term, fixed-rate financing in the midtown area,” Carr says. The unique financing structure that Capital Impact used in Detroit increased housing density in the midtown corridor and helped establish a new school and health facility.