New Gambling Bill Introduced

[General Sal]

New gambling regulation bill introduced
By JOE MACDONALD | February 1, 2008 | 11 comments
It's about time politicians started listening.

On Wednesday, Paul Lavers wrote a scathing column on Covers.com regarding how the American ridiculous endeavour to chase away Internet gambling while allowing the subprime mortgage situation to nearly collapse the American economy. Paul ended the piece by predicting the politicians would have to come around and embrace online gambling as a way to generate tax revenues and compensate for the slumping economy.

Not even a full day later, Representative Jim McDermott (D-WA) introduced the Internet Gambling Regulation and Tax Enforcement Act (H.R. 2607), designed to tax and regulate Internet gambling.

I know it seems unlikely McDermott read our column and immediately set to work creating his legislation to have it announced hours later. But it is fun to be ahead of the curve.

On the other side, my column from Monday failed to generate enough votes to have our online gambling question asked at the Democratic Debate held last night. So, we'll have to wait before knowing exactly where Barack Obama stands on gambling.

You win some, you lose some.

This proposed legislation is notable, if only for its sensibility. It doesn't propose any news taxes - it just proposes applying existing tax rules to online gambling companies.

As a companion bill to Representative Barney Frank's (D-MA) Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act (H.R. 2046), McDermott's bill fills all the gaps. Suddenly, the United States has the framework to make online gambling legal and regulated. It would generate anywhere from $8.7 billion to $42.8 billion in federal revenues over its first 10 years and I would wager it would be on the higher side of that estimate.

Adding another billion or five into the yearly tax stream can only be a good thing for the country as a whole. Think of the programs that could be funded.

McDermott's bill was not the only good news to be released yesterday. In separate news releases, both Antigua and Costa Rica announced that they are seeking WTO arbitration in their disputes with the US over America's online gambling restrictions.

The Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative website has released a good analysis of the situation featuring some juicy quotes from Nao Matsukata.

"If the U.S. withdraws following another adverse arbitral decision," he says, "the country would face potential retaliation from all WTO Members affected by the arbitration, a pool of countries including the EU, Canada, and Japan... Inviting sanctions at a time when both the U.S. Administration and Congress are both striving to stimulate an economy on the edge of recession seems foolhardy at best."

This is the former Director of Policy Planning for the United States Trade Representative we're talking about - the government office that directly deals with the WTO. Hopefully more politicians start listening to him. He knows what he's talking about.

[supafrey]

Basically the US is getting economically kicked in the ass and may not be able to unfairly ignore all trade laws in the near future.

One can only hope.

[raisebot]

Link?
This could very well be an extremely important milestone, if anyone listens.

If online gambling becomes legal and regulated in the US, it sure would cut down on a lot of the shadiness of the current wave of online gaming sites. Sure, anyone like MGMPoker.com and HarrahsCasino.com could always pull an Enron and cook their books, but always knowing that a government agency such as the Gaming Control Board could investigate them at any time, with stiff penalties for infractions such as improper record-keeping, payouts, RNG probablility, etc would in my opinion reduce the amount of fraud and cheating going on at many of the current sites. Face it, the Kahwahkanee Gaming Commisson doesnt do shit regarding complaints.

Let's see if Harrahs, with the most successful player tracking system (Total Rewards), and largest casino base, actually tries to get away with defrauding people on payouts. They make an assload as it is, they can't even pay out a true 3-2 on a blackjack. There's no way they would ever give a shit about permitting people to gamble at home, and pay out the few winners that actually come out ahead. But mark my words, at the bottom of each Harrahs page, in the tiniest of print, would be some comment like "Gamble Responsibly", or "When it's no longer fun, you might want to take this survey".