Barney Frank's online gaming bill not a safe bet, says FRC

[Christian Zionist]

Barney Frank's online gaming bill not a safe bet, says FRC

http://www.onenewsnow.com/2007/05/barney_franks_online_gaming_bi.php

Jim Brown OneNewsNow.comMay 2, 2007 computer_mouse_hand_on.jpg

Pro-family groups are mounting opposition to new legislation that seeks to repeal a federal ban on Internet gambling. A spokesman for one of those groups suggests the gaming industry's financial backing of the Democratic Party is one factor behind the measure's launch.
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Last week, Congressman Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) introduced the Internet Gambling Regulation and Enforcement Act of 2007, a bill that would overturn Congress' six-month-old ban on Internet gambling. The ban, approved last September (under legislation known as the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act), bars financial payments from banks to offshore Internet casinos that are illegal under U.S. law, making it impossible for U.S. residents to pay for Internet gambling with credit cards.

Frank calls that ban "an inappropriate interference on the personal freedom of Americans" that should be undone. In contrast, he says his measure would allow Americans to bet online with licensed Internet operators that have safeguards against underage and compulsive gambling and agree to be subject to U.S. jurisdiction and taxes.

But Tom McClusky, vice president for government affairs at the Family Research Council, says Frank's proposal would be destructive to families and taxpayers in general.

"He says the intent of [his] bill is to overturn the hard-fought-for bill last year that allowed for the federal government to help out the state governments in prosecuting their Internet gambling bans," McCluskey explains. "However, this bill would go even further to overturn state laws and federalize the whole issue ...," essentially making it "okay" on the federal level for Internet gambling and allowing the World Trade Organization and other countries to "interfere in our business," he adds.

McClusky has other reservations as well about lifting the ban approved last year. "When you're talking about Internet gambling, it's this huge, over a hundred-billion-dollar industry," he relates. "And a lot of the money, we don't know where it goes; it's untraceable." In addition, says McClusky, that money would be impossible to tax -- "as Barney Frank would like to do," he points out.

According to McClusky, several federal agencies -- the FBI, the Department of Justice, and the Government Accountability Office among them -- offer a different perspective. Those entities, he says, believe that much of the money from Internet gambling "is going into money laundering and covering up drug smuggling and even terrorist activities."

McClusky notes that Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, who is now speaker of the House, and a number of other Democratic leaders in both chambers of Congress supported the ban on online gaming when it was approved last September, so he does not expect Frank's bill to succeed. The FRC spokesman says he believes the main reason Frank is pushing for the legalization of online gaming is because the industry is "a big cash cow" for the Democratic Party.