Small Restaurants Are Furious About a Loophole in the Stimulus Bill

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section of the bill that allows big restaurant and hotel chains to take advantage of the small business relief money for any of their individual hotels and restaurants that have fewer than 500 employees. Critics argued that these big chains will take more than half of the allocated funds, leaving many smaller businesses without the cash they need to stay afloat. “Masquerading these franchisees as small businesses will pull the rug out from under independent bars and restaurants,” the post says, inviting followers to speak out against this loophole.

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An earlier version of the legislation had reserved the whole pot for independently owned small businesses, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) slid in the provision allowing restaurant and hotel chains could qualify. So a pot of money that was supposed to support more than 30 million small businesses and their nearly 60 million employees—which, by the way, is almost half of the entire US workforce—will now be split with companies like McDonalds, which took in a record $100 billion in sales and returned more than $8 billion to shareholders through stock buybacks and dividends last year.

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