Barney Frank Writes New Gambling Law for 2010
Barney Frank has been instrumental in the push for legalizing and regulating gambling. His main target has been the UIGEA, or Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, of 2006. The main purpose of the law was to protect online gamblers. Unfortunately, it failed to do the job due to a lack of specific wording. The main complaint of the law is that it never defined what “gambling” is. This created a lot of problems for the market because banks were unclear on what they were supposed to be banning and what activities were legal. Namely some lottery activities were thrown into the mix and deemed unlawful by financial institutions. The activities were later found to be legally exempt from the ban. Overzealous banks that didn’t want fees of any kind were to blame for the overly cautious moves.
The issue of gambling is hot on the mind of Representative Barney Frank. He recently introduced a new legislation that would manage gambling. Not only would it allow for online gambling to exist legally, but it also would allow the US to benefit from revenues via taxation. It also would take the responsibility of policing transactions away from banking institutions. Part of the problem with giving them the task of regulating activities was that banks were paranoid about missing gambling-related transactions and potentially being at risk for huge fines by the government. Frank’s new bill would first and foremost, be highly specific in wording. Frank is proposing a comprehensive list of what is legal online and what isn’t. Most likely the only activity that will be deemed illegal will be sports betting, but the complete wording has yet to be seen. The most difficult aspect of finding a new law that is adequate in allowing gambling is to create the right wording. Frank has been working on the bill for months now and he has what is being noted as the closest thing to a viable option for legalizing and regulating online gambling. Only time will tell where online gambling goes from here and what the state of it will be after the new amendment to the UIGEA is passed. It isn’t set to be reviewed however until after the new year. Unfortunately there are many other pressing budget issues that are taking precedence over the gambling issue.
