Momentum Building for IGREA

2007 July 23, Jonny Vincent

The Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act (IGREA) 2007 has been slowly attracting increasing support from US legislators. This week alone, five more Congressmen have agreed to sponsor the legislation, bringing the list of co-sponsors up to 32.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass) is the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, and has been vocal in his disapproval of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), passed last year by Congress and signed into law. Frank introduced his bill (IGREA) in April this year to allow the regulation and taxation of online gambling in the US, as opposed to prohibition as called for by the UIGEA.

Frank called the UIGEA "one of the stupidest laws ever passed by Congress", saying it was an invasion of American personal freedom. Many of Frank's colleagues agree with him, and the long legislative process to negate the UIGEA is slowly gaining ground.

Frank's bill is not the only bill seeking to reverse the effects of the UIGEA. Florida Congressman Robert Wexler has recently introduced a bill which could be very important for online poker players. The Skill Game Protection Act will provide an exemption for "games of skill", such as online poker. Wexler called for poker players to involve themselves in the political process by writing or calling their local representatives: ".....what [players] ought to do is let their opinions be known to their member of Congress. One - let them know that they're aware of the current law that was passed by the last Congress, which hopefully they think is ludicrous. They don't need to spell out in specifics everything that needs to be done. They just need to tell the member of Congress 'We think the law that was passed last Congress is awful!'"

Congresswoman Shelley Berkeley (D-Nevada) has also waded into the debate, introducing a bill (The Internet Gambling Study Act ) that calls for a one-year study of the online gambling industry.

Congressman Wexler pointed out that even if you don't approve of online gambling, you should be interested in the issue from a personal freedoms perspective: "Every American, whether they are Conservative Republican or Liberal Democrat, or anywhere in between should be asking themselves with all that is going wrong in the world, whether it's Iraq, whether it's Iran's nuclear quest, whether it's social security, not having enough money necessarily to make it through the next century, medicare short falls, education problems… Why would Congress invest itself so to create this extraordinary prohibition of preventing consenting adults from playing poker on the Internet when we know in past experience prohibition doesn't work? The net result unfortunately will be, people will be forced to play the Internet, playing poker on the Internet on offshore sites where they're not secure. They will be playing on Russian sites, or Caribbean sites. There will be no regulation by American governmental structures; there will be no revenue to American governmental structures. It's counterproductive and also in my mind it violates the very personal freedoms that we cherish as Americans."