Casinos with fewer than 500 employees are eligible to receive loans from a new pot of $310 billion in small-business funding that was released on Monday, a rule change that could help casinos hire back workers but was opposed by anti-gambling advocates, the <em>Washington Post</em> reported. For nearly 25 years, companies that made more than one-third of their revenue from gambling were barred from receiving Small Business Administration loans. That remained true when the government doled out a $349 billion fund for small businesses, called the Paycheck Protection Program, as part of the $2 trillion economic stimulus package. But following lobbying from the casino industry, rules issued by President Trump’s administration on Friday state that no business is disqualified from receiving PPP loans because of gambling revenue. That follows a softening of the government’s stance two weeks ago, when the Treasury Department raised the cap on gambling earnings from one-third of a company’s revenue to one-half. The new rule removes the cap altogether.
