Jersey Nick sent me a link to a banking industry website (registration required) that had a pretty interesting take on the internet gambling bill.
A last-minute objection by the Independent Community Bankers of America to a bill designed to curb Internet gambling wrecked the legislation’s chances of passing last week and could hurt its prospects this year, a senior House lawmaker charged.
A clearly angered Rep. Jim Leach minced no words in condemning the group, saying it had tarnished its own reputation on Capitol Hill and misrepresented his legislation.
The Iowa Republican’s objections came as the ICBA and others in the industry expressed renewed fears that the bill could leave banks subject to criminal penalties.
Rep. Leach dismissed that idea in an interview last week as “preposterous,” and said the group’s concerns are not shared by the banking industry at large.
“What you have here is a circumstance that the ICBA staff is taking a position in opposition to the professional judgment of all the major banks in America … and is presenting a straw-man concern … that has no credibility,” Rep. Leach said.
He continued: “We almost were able to bring this out in the Senate this week and one organization in Washington caused that not to happen. … I am absolutely astonished that the ICBA would be lining up with the Internet gambling lobbying group to block this legislation.”
The article goes on to state:
Stacy Kaper reports for the American Banker on comments from Rep. Jim Leach on last week’s demise in the Senate of a bill intended to limit Internet gambling. The Independent Community Bankers of America had commented late last month (PDF) that the bill would “would create an impossible compliance burden for “uncoded” transactions. Unlike credit card transactions, which include a code that identifies the type of business – including gambling – that is receiving payment, uncoded transactions do not provide a bank with this information. So, while it is possible to monitor and block credit card transactions, a bank cannot do this with uncoded transactions. Uncoded transactions include Automated Clearing House (ACH) transactions as well as paper and electronic checks.”
Contrary to the article, it hasn’t exactly killed the legislation, but it’s nice to see the banking community getting on our side of this debate. It’s one thing to have other gambling concerns pointing out how absurd the bill is but when the banking sector sides with the gambling community it adds a little more legitimacy.
Remember, the fight is far from over. Frist is putting this on the Senate calendar. Write your Senators today.
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Hi, my name is Bill Rini and this is my poker blog. I've been blogging about poker and the poker industry since around 2003-ish. Like most people I started out playing poker as entertainment in home games whenever we wanted to sit around and smoke cigars, drink beer, and eat pizza, and needed a good excuse. I started playing online shortly after the first online card rooms opened and it wasn't long before I was playing 20, 30, or even 40 hours a week or more. One day I received a phone call about a program manager position at Tiltware which was the company that consulted to Full Tilt Poker on software development and marketing. After Tiltware I spent about 2.5 years working at Party Poker where I was the poker room manager.
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