Submitted on Wed, 2009-05-27 11:20

After coming up short in a first effort, a Democratic lawmaker has again introduced legislation that would roll back a ban on Internet gambling enacted when Republicans led Congress.

 

 

The legislation, introduced this month by Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, would allow the Treasury Department to license and regulate online gambling companies that serve American customers. Under the current law, approved by Congress in September 2006, financial institutions are banned from handling transactions made to and from Internet gambling sites.

 

The federal government could collect increased tax revenues if Internet gambling was regulated. Online gambling should be legal as a matter of personal liberty,  an activity the government should neither encourage nor prohibit.

 

Opponents are mobilizing to defeat the bill. They include social conservatives and professional and amateur sports organizations, which say more gambling opportunities could threaten the integrity of their competition.

 

"Illegal offshore Internet gambling sites are a criminal enterprise, and allowing them to operate unfettered in the United States would present a clear danger to our youth, who are subject to becoming addicted to gambling at an early age," Representative Spencer Bachus, Republican of Alabama and the ranking member on the House Financial Services Committee, said in a statement.