At the close of the last congressional session before midterm elections a bill was passed that made America a much safer place. Thanks to this heroic bill, our ports are now safer and Americans are protected from the threat of being able to choose whether or not to gamble online.
Don’t think those things belong on the same level? Think that, perhaps, gambling should be debated and decided apart from issues of national security? Tell that to Tennessee’s own Senator Bill Frist and the rest of the Republicans in congress.
At the last minute, Frist tacked
the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act onto the port security
bill, which Congress passed just as the final session before the November
elections came to a close. If you didn’t hear much debate from senators
surrounding the UIGEA, that is probably because there wasn’t much.
Not because there is unanimous agreement about the bill, but, rather,
because the political circumstances made it nearly impossible for this
debate to take place. Even Senators who were opposed to the UIGEA could
not afford dispute the port measure. In this era of national security
worship, who wants to be responsible for delaying the passage of a port
security bill the week before national elections?
Even apart from the questionable way in which the UIGEA was apart, the bill is seriously flawed. It is based on bad principles, it will not work in practice, and its political implications could prove to be disastrous for the GOP.
The principles that this bill is justified on are insufficient. The federal government should not making laws that restrict individual freedom unless such laws are related to a compelling government purpose. And it seems like the federal government face as uphill battle in trying to argue that restricting gambling is a compelling governmental interest.
Perhaps they could try to make the argument that they are preserving some notion of public morality. However the federal government has no constitutionally protected authority to enforce morality. That is a power reserved to the states, and for good reason. Certainly this law would stand up to an actual constitutional challenge on the basis of the interstate commerce clause, but it still violates the spirit of the small government federalism that Republicans supposedly represent.
How can the party that supports
personal responsibility and the notion that markets usually work because
they are made up of rational actors capable of maximizing their own
utility, argue that the government needs to intervene and protect people
from gambling. Do some people become addicted to online gambling? Yes,
but many people are capable of enjoying gambling in moderation. The
purpose of the federal government is not to save people from themselves.
Further, how can the government make a compelling moral argument against online gambling, when many state governments use forms of gambling to generate revenue? It seems hypocritical. Also, according to Fox News, Representative Bob Goodlatte, one of the Republicans who led the effort to pass the bill in the House, has accepted substantial contributions from the horse racing industry in the past.
Further, beyond the faulty
principles upon which this bill is laid, it is also likely to have some
disastrous consequence. Though thoughts on what the effects of
this will are now purely speculative, a number of commentators have
pointed out, that this could be the 21st century's version of prohibition.
Just as bootleggers and speakeasies found ways around the law they felt
was illegitimate, so will those who want to gamble.
According to the New York Times at least three major online casinos were still open a week after the bill became law. They found quite a simple way to get around the ban: have American banks transfer the money to foreign banks, which would then transfer the money to the casinos. Even with the economic efficiency lost by unnecessary financial transactions, this is still likely more appealing then other options that will emerge if feds try to crack down on this process.
Perhaps the hardest question to answer is who did the Republicans think they were going to please with this bill? The answer to that is uncertain. The more important question, though, is just who did they make angry? The answer to this question is pretty clear: a lot of people. According to the New York Times, approximately 24 million people gamble online. Further, although the reason many people decry gambling is because it is addictive and is mostly likely to suck in the poor, this is a misconception. It turns out that the demographics of your average online gambler are more likely to middle-class men who are, disproportionately Republicans.
Some conservatives have decried this as another example of how the GOP is being taken over by the influence of the religious right. Perhaps, the Republicans were trying to reaffirm their place as the party that protects religious values. However, if this was the GOP's intention, it made a miscalculation. While on many moral issues, there is a great deal of consensus the religious right, it is likely that gambling is not one of those issues. For example, orthodox Catholics who make up an increasing percentage of the religious right and go along way in shaping its agenda are not, as a whole, opposed to gambling. In fact, Catholic Churches have long used charitable gambling as a major source of revenue. Sure there is a difference between playing Bingo at church and playing video poker online, but the fact is gambling is not an issue that will rally the religious right.
The UIEGA was based on bad principles, and practice will likely have bad effects. Perhaps we should be used to such bills from the GOP; after all, a party in power is bound to have to make compromises to maintain its coalition. However, this bill is particularly upsetting because there does not even seem to be a political upside. If the Republicans were under the impression that this bill would have positive implications, they better hire another bookie because, odds are, it won't.
Comments