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A “blanket approval” issued by the Trump administration allows lawmakers, Small Business Administration staff, other federal officials and their families to bypass long-standing rules on conflicts of interest to seek funds for themselves, adding to concerns that coronavirus aid programs could be subject to fraud and abuse, the Washington Post reported. Under normal circumstances, lawmakers and some federal employees who apply for small business funds in some cases have to seek approval of a little-known SBA body called the Standards of Conduct Committee. The rule applies to officials who are business owners, officers, directors or shareholders with a more than 10 percent business interest, plus any “household members” of those officials. But in a rule the administration issued April 13, the administration disclosed that the approval requirement had been suspended for all entities seeking funds from the $660 billion program “so that further action by the [ethics committee] is not necessary.” Policy experts and government watchdogs said the blanket waiver could allow officials to write the rules to benefit themselves. Because the administration has not yet released any information about the individual borrowers, it is unknown how many members of Congress or SBA officials have benefited from the nearly $700 billion program. SBA spokesman Jim Billimoria said that the administration issued the blanket waiver because it treated PPP similarly to loan programs that the agency provides in the wake of natural disasters and because agency officials were concerned that there could be a large volume of waiver requests. The Standards of Conduct Committee is made up of the deputy general counsel, acting chief operating officer and associate administrator of human resources.