Home / Poker News February 2011 / Letter on legal online poker submitted to Congressman Issa
Letter on legal online poker submitted to Congressman Issa
Posted by: Jo Martin - Thu, 2011-02-03 15:24
The issue of legal online poker was brought into the attention of federal legislators once again this week, through a letter that Michael Waxman of the Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative submitted to Congressman Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The letter came as a response to the call that Issa had issued to entrepreneurs to give him ideas on how he could help forward their cause.
The letter contained the usual arguments of the pro-poker camp:
online poker was still played in the US despite the 2006 UIGEA and players were taking greater chances by having to get by without any sort of government protection. The regulation and taxation of the activity would open up an untapped resource for Uncle Sam as far as tax revenue was concerned, and that potential regulation would offer players a much safer legal environment in which they could practice their hobby.
Waxman admitted that his letter was only meant to be a measure of keeping the issue of legal online poker and gambling on legislators’ tables, preventing it from being swept under the rug. He doesn’t expect his letter to produce any sort of meaningful legal headway for the cause, mainly because Issa’s Committee isn’t even the committee from where a true legal initiative could spark from.
With all that though, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee could still help by holding hearings and by highlighting the generally irksome nature of the UIGEA in various ways.
With much more being done in the way of legal online poker on state level than on a federal one this year, Waxman expressed his group’s commitment to federally legalized online poker, gambling, as well as sports betting. That doesn’t mean however that they do not support state-level initiatives as well.
According to Waxman, the possibility of legal online poker becoming a reality over the next two years in spite of the Republican gains in Congress should still not be ruled out.
