The push for legalized online gambling at the federal level is on during the lame duck session. But there are some Republicans who are objecting to what they are calling a “secretive, closed-door, undemocratic” effort in the Senate to pass
legislation that would legalize and tax some Internet gambling before Congress adjourns this year.
The Republican representatives Spencer Bachus, Dave Camp and Lamar Smith, all in line to be committee chairmen with oversight of online gambling when Republicans take control of the House in January and they are the ones making this claim.
Let’s be real, it’s not like it’s a bunch of suits in behind closed doors in a smoke filled room scribbling notes down with pencils on a new bill, that sounds absurd. “Creating a federal right to gamble that has never existed in our country’s history and imposing an unprecedented new tax regime on such activity require careful deliberation, not back- room deals,” the lawmakers said in a Dec. 1 letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his Republican counterpart, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Obviously.
But it is interesting to note what else was said in the letter, particularly, “We also are concerned that this new rush to embrace Internet casino gambling might be partially motivated by one of the gravest sins that afflicts this Congress: desperation for more tax dollars to pay for ever-increasing federal spending,” … “Congress should not take advantage of the young, the weak and the vulnerable in the name of new revenues…Approving such controversial legislation by attaching it to another bill would be a secretive, closed-door, undemocratic process.”
Take advantage of the weak and the vulnerable? Are all citizens who enjoy gambling as a form of entertainment to be labeled as the weak and the vulnerable? Again, it sounds absurd. Additionally, isn’t this a classic case of pot calling the tea kettle black? The approving of a controversial bill, attaching it to another bill and sneaking it through, in the wee hours of the night, isn’t that how the UIGEA was passed?
I’m just saying, let’s call the hungry-hungry hypocrits out on the obvious.
