Two Representatives go public with their views with piece in New York Post
Thursday 16th August 2007
Two Members of America’s House of Representatives have published an editorial in the New York Post newspaper outlining why they believe in regulating online casinos rather than banning them.
Representatives Steve Israel, a Democrat, and Republican Pete King were original co-signers of Barney Frank's Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act (IGREA), House of Representatives Bill 2046, and said that the Treasury Department is in charge of a number of jobs, including protecting the President, investigating counterfeit money and tracking terrorist financing and should not be made to look after the ban on online casinos.
The Treasury Department is now being asked ‘to spend their time and resources going after something far more trivial, people who play cards from their home computers’, the two Long Island Representatives wrote.
The article, Web Gambling: Tax, Don’t Ban, even pointed out that ‘years ago, the Treasury's Secret Service agents used to help Harry Truman put poker games together in the White House. Now they'd be locking him up. Frankly, Federal law-enforcement officials have bigger fish to fry’, the Congressmen affirmed.
Frank's Bill would see online gambling licensed and regulated by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network and exempt from the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) with players having to pay tax.
'Simply taxing web betting would generate significant revenues that could be used for a variety of domestic priorities,' the duo pointed out.
As US residents will always find ways to gamble online, Israel and King said that the ban is misdirected and unenforceable and, ironically, leads to an increase in the unprotected environments that UIGEA claimed to address.
This is because, the two claim, a bans pushes businesses into the hands of ‘scam artists and grey market entrepreneurs’ based in unregulated offshore locations.
The piece ends by saying, ‘In the end, there is the question of how much we want Government to be involved in our private lives. For many, playing poker with friends on the Internet is a way to unwind at the end of the day. Technology aside, web gambling isn't so different than the way Americans have relaxed and enjoyed the company of friends for decades.’
Two Members of America’s House of Representatives have published an editorial in the New York Post newspaper outlining why they believe in regulating online casinos rather than banning them.