Internet Gambling Bill Reintroduced In Congress

The blog at Onlinepoker.org posted that Barney Frank has teamed up with a REPUBLICAN representative from California, John Campbell, to reintroduce the Internet Gambling Regulation, Consumer Protection, and Enforcement Act. I'll give it to Barney for persistence, but the chance to get this bill through was last year, when Democrats controlled the House. With Republicans now in charge of the House power structure, this seems like a longshot.

It will be easy to predict that this bill goes nowhere and likely that will be the outcome. But not so fast. With the economy in horrible shape, and the federal budget in even worse shape, a strange thing may happen: economics will trump "morality." If Congress needs the cash, they'll grab at anything (usually they grab at our wallets - quite well I might add). Maybe they latch onto this as it might be easier to pass this initially than a tax hike. Congress likes raising taxes too but I digress...

A recent post highlighted some of the advantages of internet gambling. You can read that post here. Maybe you can get your Representative to read it and admit that internet gambling is here to stay, so why not regulate like the UK?

A very tough hurdle for the bill will be getting past the House Financial Services Committee, which has a staunch anti-internet gambling person now at the helm, Rep. Bachus. Will budget needs outweigh personal bias? Who knows?