Thousands of casino workers across the United States thought they would be winners when Donald Trump was victorious for a second term.

Candidate Trump, while on the campaign trail, told workers who rely on tips as part of their income that, if he were elected to a second term, after his four-year absence from the Oval Office, workers would no longer have that tip income taxed.

Initially, many workers were skeptical about that ever happening, but then came the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that, thanks to Congress, seemed to make good on Trump’s campaign promise.

But what a terrible outcome thousands of casino workers have been dealt instead — an outcome that threatens to thrust them backward, in a big way, toward minimum wage, after years of income that allowed them to live comfortably, although by no means as someone deemed rich.

Here’s how it happened:

Although OBBA gives the workers in question — workers who process slot machine jackpots and pay out the winnings — at least part of what Trump promised, someone inserted — some people might say hid in the bill — a provision that likely will devastate the yearly earnings of those workers.

The provision has raised the reporting threshold when it comes to slot winnings to $2,000 from $1,200.

What’s the big deal about that, some people might ask.

The “big deal” is that most jackpots paid out are between $1,200 and $2,000, and that seemingly meager change will eliminate much, if not most, of the tip money the slot attendants who process and pay out the jackpots receive.

The potential annual losses already being tracked at some casinos, since the provision reportedly will not go into effect until Jan. 1, are being estimated at as much as $20,000, possibly significantly higher.

Would members of Congress, some of whom are responsible for insertion of the provision in OBBA, look kindly on a salary reduction of that magnitude for themselves?

Then there are those lawmakers who voted in favor of OBBA — and they all know who they are — who apparently did not know, or perhaps didn’t bother to consider, what the broader impact of the provision might be, besides allowing jackpot winners to avoid taxation for potentially an additional $800 per jackpot.

Republicans in Congress passed OBBA, but the word circulating in at least some casinos is that Democrats are in a big way responsible for what has happened.

And, has anyone in Congress bothered to ask how much money the federal treasury will be losing by not taxing that “meager” $800? Meanwhile, the workers in question are not going to reap the full benefit of the new law, a benefit they were promised by Trump.

The federal treasury and the workers in question would have been better off if Trump’s promise had not become part of the new law.

The bottom line is that, before this provision goes into effect, it should be revisited.

In the meantime, the Big Beautiful Bill, to the workers in question, might be regarded as very awful and ugly indeed.

Not everyone tips, but a $100 or $200 change might have been livable, while an $800 change isn’t.