Change You Can Believe In
Sunday, January 25, 2009 - Gene Bromberg
Last Tuesday saw the inauguration of Barack Obama as our 44th President. The major thrust of Obama’s campaign was change–and after eight years of George W. Bush running things that was rather an obvious tack to take. Immediately after taking office the new President signed a number of executive orders reversing policies established by the previous Administration, and all this righting-the-ship and steadying-the-rudder no doubt has poker players hoping that the down the road some sanity might return vis-a-vis the government’s stance on the game.
It’s doubtful that poker is high on Obama’s list of priorities, what with the economy and Iraq and Afghanistan and other nightmarish problems to deal with. But there has been quite a bit of news on the legal and legislative front the past week or so that shows that the tide maybe be slowly shifting back in poker’s favor.
First, the bad news–on Monday, January 19th, the rules governing Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) went into effect. Over two years after the UIGEA was tacked onto the Safe Port Act at the last minute and voted into law, the rules governing the UIGEA were finally issued on November 12th. They did not formally go into effect until the day before Obama was inaugurated, which was hardly a coincidence. These rules put the onus on financial institutions to identify and block transactions to internet gaming sites…although the rules STILL do not define what is and isn’t an internet gaming site, nor which transactions specifically are to be blocked. Which is not the sort of ambigious witch-hunting that beleagured financial companies need to waste time on these days.
However, there are ways wherein these rules might be rendered moot. The big gun is the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to reverse or cancel regulations made by the previous Administration within 90 days of their enactment. President Bush didn’t have much need of the Act because the Clinton Administration put forth it’s new rules in it’s last few weeks, so President Bush was able to rescind them without Congressional help. He hoped to avoid his own rules being swept away by the new President by enacting them more than 60 days before he left office, but the Congressional Review Act gives legislators a bigger window to work with. And it’s big enough to go after new regulations the Bush Administration passed that allowed for uranium mining near the Grand Canyon, that made it easier for coal companies to dump debris in nearby streams and valleys…and that required banks to block transactions to internet gaming sites.
Typically it’s a good thing politically to make the tent as big as possible and get as many people on your side. Having enviromental groups and civil rights advocates standing shoulder-to-shoulder with poker players would be a good thing. The problem is that to reverse regulations using the Congressional Review Act, every single regulation has to be debated and voted on separately. That could take an awfully long time, and Congress’s attention might be better served focusing on the colossal problems (economy, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc) we currently face. To get around that problem, Representative Jerrod Nadler (D-NY) introduced the Midnight Rule Act, which would give Cabinet secretaries more latitude in rewriting regulations created in the final 90 days of the previous Administration.
There are some problems facing the passage of this bill–it would have to be passed FAST to so that the changes could be made within the 90-day window. And Congress has a lot on it’s legislative plate right now–getting this bill up for a vote might not be a priority. It could also be filibustered by Republicans in Congress. And while I like the whole checks-and-balances part of our government, this might put a bit too much power in the hands of those able to re-write and rescind regulations. I don’t think laws should be written in stone, but they shouldn’t be written in sand either. Something for the constitutional scholars among us to mull over.
Maybe it’s unlikely that the UIGEA rules will be reversed. And maybe it’s unlikely that we’ll see a repeal of the UIGEA this year and online poker finally legalized and legitimatized. But as you can see there are powerful forces at work, both inside and outside of government, that want to see the laws governing poker changed. Of course, there are still powerful forces opposing poker–during Attorney General-designate Eric Holder’s confirmation hearings, Sen. John Kyl (perhaps online gaming’s most implacable Congressional foe) asked Holder the following:
The question that I’d ask and wanted just to get confirmed for the record is that you indicated that under your leadership, the Department of Justice would continue to aggressively enforce the law against the forms of internet gambling that DOJ considers illegal
Somehow understanding the question despite Kyl’s tortured syntax, Holder replied that he would enforce the law. Which makes sense–as the nation’s top law-enforcement official it would’ve been very odd had Holder replied, “Nah, don’t like that law, think I’ll give it a miss”. Of course the Attorney General will enforce the laws on the books. Whether Holder will “aggressively” enforce the UIGEA, or whether he’ll focus his attention on more serious matters, remains to be seen.
So that’s what’s up on the on the federal level. In another post I’ll talk about the legal battles being waged at the state and local level. But I think this is enough talk about Congress and legislation and John Kyl for one day. Especially a Sunday.
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Tags: barack obama, change.gov, eric holder, john kyl, obama inauguaration, obama poker, obama uigea, online poker laws, online poker legislation, online poker regulations, poker laws, poker legislation, Poker Poker Poker, ub, ub blog, uigea, unlawful internet gambling enforcement act
February 8th, 2009 at 11:10 am
[...] to be included among the measures Congress will look to rescind.” That’s something I wrote about a few weeks ago, that the Congressional Review Act could be used to reverse the anti-gaming rules enacted by the [...]