A month ago, Senator Lindsey Graham (R – SC), a member of the kiddie table version of the Republican Presidential debates, resurrected his attempts to ban online poker in the United States by shoehorning language into the Senate Appropriations Bill. It was a longshot attempt to advance Las Vegas Sands CEO Sheldon Adelson’s anti-poker agenda, but it was still a step that was taken. The next step was for someone to do the same thing in the House Appropriation Bill. Fortunately, that attempt has failed.
The Senate filed its Appropriations Bill on April 21st; it was not until early May that anyone in the poker community noticed Graham’s comment in said bill (it appears that Gambling Compliance was the first to bring it to light). Graham’s comment was short and did nothing to actually change any laws, but it was there nonetheless:
Internet Gambling- Since 1961, the Wire Act has prohibited nearly all forms of gambling over interstate wires, including the Internet. However, beginning in 2011, certain States began to permit Internet gambling. The Committee notes that the Wire Act did not change in 2011. The Committee also notes that the Supreme Court of the United States has stated that `criminal laws are for courts, not for the Government, to construe.’ Abramski v. U.S., 134 S.Ct. 2259, 2274 (2014) (internal citation omitted).
According to those who know about these sorts of political machinations, the pro-RAWA language was put in there as an initial step to eventually get an amendment tacked on that would ban online gambling in the U.S. Because of the nature of how it would be done, there would be no opportunity for anyone to debate it or remove it from the bill. Similar to how the UIGEA was snuck onto the SAFE Port Act, a must-pass bill, the goal was to attach the anti-online gambling language to a bill that had no chance of being rejected in order to ram it through the legislative process without risk of failure.
A number of things would have had to go right for Adelson and Graham for all that to happen, the first of which (after Graham’s trickery) would have been for a similar pro-RAWA comment to be added to the House Appropriations Bill. Rep. Charlie Dent (R – PA) tried to do it, but it never happened for him. It appears that, like with other attempts to advance RAWA, very few legislators bought into the bullshit.
The Poker Players Alliance tweeted that in trying to get his language inserted, Dent came off as the usual, ignorant, “sky is falling” anti-gambling mouthpiece. The tweet read, “Dent espousing the typical unproven myths that ignores how regulated online gaming really works.”
He ultimately withdrew the amendment and yet another attempt to get RAWA passed in some form failed.