The online casino and gambling industry received somewhat of a blow yesterday, when the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Internet Gambling Prohibition and Enforcement Act (HR 4411). The bill, which was a synthesized version of the two separate anti-online casino gambling bills drawn up by Republican's Bob Goodlatte and James Leach, was overwhelmingly passes by a vote of 317-93.  Now, HR 4411 is passed onto the Senate, which may not get to the bill until next year's legislative session.  There are only a few months left in the current year's legislative window, which means that Republican Senator, John Kyl of Arizona will be moving fast to make HR 4411 a top priority.

As for the House hearing, which brought forth debate for nearly three-and-a-half hours, Goodlatte did most of the talking in support of the bill.  His argument was that gambling has historically always been regulated by individual states.  He says the bill simply updated the Wire Act so that remote forms of betting like online casino gambling - which are not being regulated by a state - will be made illegal.  Other speakers in support of Goodlatte addressed the normal arguments usually brought against online gambling, including its economic drain of billions of dollars, contribution to addiction and familial hardships, as well as its more recent links to money laundering and supposed fostering of terrorist activities (highlighted by the Bush agenda).

Speaking out against HR 4411 were Democrats John Conyers and Robert Scott, whose main argument was that the bill does nothing to stop Americans from participating in online casino gambling.  Rather, the only enforcement it exerts is on the online casinos and internet gambling businesses themselves, which are already out of the domain of U.S. law since the majority of them operate offshore and are licensed in legally regulated jurisdictions. Conyers also pointed out that the bill still has several carve outs for which types of betting (horse racing in particular) are deemed illegal.  A less effective (although interesting) argument was referring to HR 4411 as "Abramoffs's Revenge".  Although Jack Abramoff fought against the online casino gambling prohibition bill of 2000, he only did so because it would have jeopardized the potential of state-run online lotteries.  In regards to HR 4411, the bill would allow individual states to decide for themselves whether or not to permit online gambling within state borders - thus giving state's the right to sustain online lotteries and preserve Abramoff's agenda.

Democrat Shelley Berkley of Nevada proposed an attachment to the bill, whose intentions were to ban all forms of online casino gambling, and not just the carve outs that Goodlatte is allowing for the horse racing industry. Goodlatte cited the attachment as a "poison pill" and that its only intention was to see that his bill failed.  He defended his carve out for the horse racing industry by saying that the Interstate Horse Racing Act explicitly deals with this sector of the gambling industry, and therefore it is not necessary to address it in HR 4411.  Berkley's attachment was not passed by a vote of 111-297.