Recently, the question of whether efforts will be made to push for an outright online gambling ban in the upcoming Lame Duck session of Congress has been brought up on several forums. Up until now, efforts to pass the Sheldon Adelson-backed Restoration of America’s Wire Act (RAWA) have not yielded any results. Attorney Generals of many states are not keen to back the bill, and, besides a number of hearings held by bill sponsors, Jason Chaffetz and Lindsey Graham, nobody has felt threatened by RAWA passing through the traditional channels.
But herein lies the problem. Nobody believed that a ban on online gambling would pass in 2006 when the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) was suddenly slipped through on the back of a largely unrelated bill during a Lame Duck session. UIGEA’s sudden successful hijacking of the Safe Port Act stunned the industry and caused considerable harm to many online casino and poker sites – the results of which are still felt today. Could RAWA supporters in Congress try and pull the same stunt in the upcoming Lame Duck session and pass their bill?
Lame Duck sessions have the ability to make lawmakers do the strangest things. Take the example of former Nevada Senator Harry Reid, one of the most vocal online poker supporters in history, who suddenly turned around in the 2014 Lame Duck session and said that he would be open to the idea of banning online poker on a federal level. Reid is set to retire in the near future and it is not clear where he currently stands in his love-hate relationship with Sheldon Adelson. The senator said recently that he wouldn’t be keen to see online poker banned, telling Gambling Compliance: “I, personally, don’t plan on doing anything.” Some analysts have taken Reid’s inclusion of the word ‘personally’ as a possible sign that he is aware that others may be cooking up trouble.
What also remains unclear is how the incoming government will treat online gambling. Donald Trump has not stated his official stance on the subject, and at the moment there is a lot of guess-work surrounding the topic. Some believe that Trump will feel obligated to show Republican sponsor Adelson a token of his appreciation by making the passage of RAWA or similar bills as smooth as possible. Others say that Trump’s history as a casino owner may make him sympathetic to the pro igaming cause.
For now, for lack of choice, American online gambling fans have adopted a wait-and-see approach.
