A House subcommittee on Thursday will hear testimony on how the credit card and financial services industry are contributing to the increasing popularity of Internet gambling.
The House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearing will focus on proposals to limit U.S. citizens’ access to Internet gaming sites, as well as the ramifications for financial institutions involved in the transactions.
Sitting in on the hearing will be full committee member Rep. James Leach, R-Iowa, who has sponsored a bill that would declare illegal the use of checks, debit and credit cards to pay debts for or to receive profits from Internet gambling.
The hearing comes as Rep. Robert Goodlatee, R-Va., is poised to reintroduce legislation banning most forms of online gambling. While Goodlatte’s bill, the “Internet Gambling Prohibition Act,” would have outlawed most forms of Internet gambling, the measure also contained some notable carve-outs for closed-loop, so-called “parimutuel” gambling businesses.
Those exceptions left a sour taste in Democrats’ mouths, many of whom noted that the bill devoted more wiggle room to exceptions to the Situs Judi Slot rule than not.
According to sources familiar with the draft legislation, the new Goodlatte gambling bill will leave out many of those exceptions. Goodlatte also is expected to incorporate most of the provisions in the Leach legislation.
“His staff really wanted to create a level playing field for everyone,” said one Capitol Hill source. “They don’t want to be seen as treating any one entity different from any other.”
Nearly every one of those entities will be present at tomorrow’s hearing, including executives from the Interactive Gaming Council, National Association of State and Provincial Lotteries, the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), and VISA.
The subcommittee will also hear from witnesses invited to testify on the evils of Internet gambling, including the executive directors of the National Council on Problem Gambling and the Compulsive Gambling Center.