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The discussion centered around Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s attempts to legalize Internet poker in the US continued Thursday afternoon with Reid’s office insisting the draft bill was still in play.
Reid hopes to attach his legislation to a controversial tax extension bill that should be voted on some time next week.
Among the bill’s supporters, the popular consumer activist and reporter John Stossel, now a regular fixture at Fox News and the Fox Business Network.
Stossel called the current ban “destructive”.
“More Americans play poker than golf or tennis, more than $100M spent every day on bets in legal casinos, and so a huge internet business has been driven underground or offshore,” he wrote on this blog.
Stossel quipped that he was surprised Reid would be pushing such legislation since he “rarely comes up with anything good”.
And the Senate Majority Leader hasn’t exactly let up on his efforts even after the media presented evidence that Reid’s biggest donors (and likely beneficiaries of legalized online poker) were the Vegas casinos. The draft legislation would also prohibit existing online poker sites from doing business with US citizens for a period up to 2 years (current wording says 15 months).
Stossel, like many in the online poker community itself, still criticized the bill as it stands now.
“While Reid’s proposal may be an improvement on the status quo, it falls far short of restoring the full freedom of consenting adults to use their money, time, and online access in a manner of their choosing.”
- Christopher Costigan, Gambling911.com Publisher
