Reid and Others May Again Take Up Online Gambling Bill

• Published: May 4, 2013
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Now that lawmakers in the federal government have seen that states have taken the initiative and sought to have online gambling regulated and licensed within their own jurisdictions, they are springing back into action to try and get their piece of the action too. Once again we are seeing efforts to pass a national bill to address the online gambling issue, and the proposal that is being formulated should be ready to be introduced as a bill within the next month or so. Some details would need to be ironed out, including how the revenues from taxes would be divided between the states and the federal government, and there was no clear indication as to whether online poker would be the only subject covered in the bill, but with individual states passing other casino games into law, it would be surprising if proposed federal legislation were to ban such games.

Harry Reid, the Senator from Nevada who was unsuccessful in getting a bill to the table last year, is taking his shot at it once again, although this time there could be some more steam behind it because people have now seen the momentum that has been created in the legalization movement on a state-by-state basis. Joe Barton, the congressman from Texas who will be the one to introduce the legislation, certainly makes no secret about the fact that he and his colleagues have gotten something of a push from that.

Reid teamed up with Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona to bring last year's bill forth, but they were stopped short in their tracks, in no small part because the Republican party itself opposed online gambling, and most felt like Reid had fashioned the measure to give Nevada too much in the way of regulatory influence. The opinion of most people who are familiar with the online casino industry is that having a number of different sets of laws in the various states would be cumbersome, and that playing constituencies that are fragmented according to state would severely divide the pool of players so as to detract from the experience of playing online poker, for instance.