Warning of new congressional attack on legalised online gambling

Michelle Minton of the Competitive Enterprise Institute warned in a tweet over the weekend that Pennsylvania Republican Representative Charlie Dent is planning a new initiative to have Congress ban all US online gambling, with a move to attach an amendment to a large spending bill as early as next week.

“Alert: Rep. Dent will offer approps amendment to ban state-based internet gambling with a vote as early as next week,” Minton tweeted.

Minton has been monitoring Dent’s moves in this latest in a series of legislative attempts to ban the US industry.

These have included several failed campaigns to resurrect the Wire Act through the Restoration of America’s Wire Act; moves to persuade the Justice Department to revisit the DoJ Office of Legal Counsel opinion that the Wire Act covers only sports betting; appeals to the Attorney General to take action; and attempts to attach RAWA language to unrelated spending bills (see previous reports).

In an op-ed piece published on June 20 this year Minton detailed the assaults on US online gambling and who has been behind them.

She observed that reservations regarding federal interference in the rights of US states to govern matters within their borders has deterred many politicians from supporting the persistent moves of the anti-online gambling lobby to ban what are proving to be useful contributors to state coffers in states that have legalised, such as New Jersey, Nevada and Delaware.

Minton notes that Dent’s behaviour in Congress is at odds with events in his own state of Pennsylvania, where the legislature is working to regulate, licence and tax online gambling… and where almost two thirds of voters say they want online gambling legalised.

The full details on Dent’s plans are not yet apparent, but pro-state’s rights and online gambling factions are now alerted, and opposition will likely be as fierce as it was last year, when a similar attempt to sneak RAWA language into a spending bill was thwarted.

The spending bill Dent will probably target is a more than 1,000-page spending bill that Congress must pass before the end of September this year.