June 23, 2009 (CAP Newswire) — Barney Frank’s efforts to overturn the UIGEA (the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, a piece of U.S. legislation that's strangling the online gaming industry) are gaining more and more support in the U.S. Congress, as multiple media reports continue to emphasize.
The latest of these reports comes from high-profile political site Politico.com, which recently published an article showing that Barney Frank has gained more advocates than he has in the past, when he tried to accomplish the same task but with no success.
It’s different this year, though. Perhaps that's because of the glut of media coverage on the issue (a new thing), or perhaps it's the skyrocketing popularity of the game of poker in general — or perhaps it’s because of the most recent political shift in the U.S., which has seen a Democratic majority in Washington for the first time in over a decade.
According to Frank, the U.S. government’s recent seizure of $34 million in poker winnings is also helping that fight, by raising peoples’ awareness of the government’s harmful actions.
“Even his Republican counterpart, who led a charge last year to defeat legislation gutting the law, believes Frank is holding much better cards in the current Congress than he had in the last one,” writes Patrick O’Connor in the Politico.com article.
“It’s going to be an uphill battle to stop it this time,” Alabama Rep. Spencer Bachus is quoted in the article. “We caught them off guard last time … This time, they won’t be off guard.”
The article goes into detail about just what political challenges Frank faces in this quest to legalize and regulate online gambling, and details the deceitful way in which UIGEA was passed in the first place. Click here to read the full story.