Barney Frank Links Online Gambling and the yank Way

The long-awaited bill from Barney Frank regulating online gambling was heard today by the home Financial Services Committee, and Frank told the Representatives in attendance the measure is an issue of private liberty and freedom.

Speaking in defense of his bill regulating online gambling operators, H.R. 2267, Chairman Barney Frank told the home Financial Services Committee that his motivation in authoring the measure goes beyond increasing revenues to dealing directly with guaranteeing freedom. Frank said that government should restrict choice only when direct harm to a different person is involved, which he asserted isn't the case with online gambling.

Spencer Bachus, a number one voice in Congress against gaming bills, said the Frank bill would offer "gambling in every home, every computer, Blackberry, iPod." He said states have to be making the selections to permit Internet gaming, in place of have it forced on them.

"This bill, if it imposes anything, imposes freedom," replied Republican John Campbell of California to the worries of Bachus. Campbell noted that US residents would have increased choice, not diminished, if the bill were made law.

Bachus continued, saying the effect of the proposal can be redistribution of wealth from poor Americans to foreign gaming operators. He tried to make use of the insurgent grassroots rejection of governmental expansion and the socialistic redistribution of wealth to an ill-fitting reference to online casinos.

But Frank responded testily, calling Bachus' argument nonsense and saying to him that the bill is ready "allowing people to voluntarily make decisions of that you disapprove." Frank said US residents need to be free to make their very own choice, without clearance from church groups "or the Christian Science Monitor or whoever."

When a committee member suggested the bill be tied to Jim McDermott's proposal on online gambling revenue or another such bill detailing tax collection, Frank went as far as to notice that, while the revenues make a pleasing addition to the cause, he sees his measure as "a fundamental matter of freedom."

The bill passed a preliminary voice vote, with an official roll call of members to occur later today.

Published on July 28, 2010 by JoshuaMcCarthy

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