Or how about everything goes to plan. When would this get passed into law?

I think you're overestimating how much this means to anyone in Congress.......we are at a point now very few, if any are adamantly opposed to this. I agree, the House GOP is the unknown in this for the top item. But no bloc of votes will be swayed one way or the other over ipoker. UNLESS something like Adelson happens again..........but I would hope Reid and Kyl fellated that problem away over recess.

When the bill goes to the floor it will be available. Then you have amendment processes in House and Senate, and more than likely reconciliation, followed by final votes. I doubt the original text flies through, so it is all wait and see.

Yeah, I disagree with this, I still view this as a controversial piece of legislation and think there are a decent amount of Congresscritters that will be very much against this.

they're politicians so they might spin it as "regulation", "protecting american families" etc rather than "online gambling legalization", so that it's more digestible by politicians worrying about their image if they vote for it and so it's spun in a certain way by media

lets just hope these greedy scumbags get this done. god i hate our politicians so much. onetime *******s

you guys know im typically very pessimistic, but i think this has the best chance of anything we've seen in years. perhaps a better chance than we even had with the reid bill in 2010 (or most definitely a better chance).

i'd really encourage you to keep on your calls, emails, letters, tweets and such. follow rich's daily action plan, but don't be afraid to supplement some calls in there too (unless the PPA guys for whatever reason advise this as a bad idea), especially if you are in the district of some of the key representatives/senators.

i'd think you guys in NV would want to be hammering reid pretty hard (altho im pretty sure the lobbyists from all sides are in the process of doing that now... it cant hurt). as well as AZ and Kyl.

It becomes a lot less controversial when it bans all other forums of internet gambling and shuts down all of the "illegal" offshore gambling sites that minors have access to. When UIGEA went threw you heard a lot less about how it made internet horse betting legal then you did about how he it was going to shut down internet poker. I admit that poker is a bigger topic then horse racing but it will give them the ability to spin this more into "we banned dangerous forms of internet gambling, are protecting underage citizens, eliminating shady off-shore gambling sites, protecting US customers, and letting each state decide if they want to participate in allowing online poker"

I'm not saying that this is going to make the bill less controversial enough to pass but they also have the recent DOJ ruling that will give Reid and Kyl more leverage. They will be able to say if we don't get this done soon then states are going to start doing their own thing. It would also appear that the Indian tribes would be in favor of this since poker makes up a small % of their revenue and they would rather have poker be legal and take away a very small % (since not everyone is going to all together drop playing live and it could potentially help increase traffic) then leave it up to the states who might legalize other forms of gambling which would greatly hurt their revenue more.

This makes the for best opportunity we have had to get a bill threw. Hopefully this will be enough to get it done.

They don't really need to "spin it" since that is the truth. They will be outlawing all casino igaming except for ipoker.

nah it's still sort of spinny, esp since some of them railed really hard against poker specifically

x100000000000

"OMG Slugger5x just posted in the Reid/Kyl thread. This could be some new big news!!.... Dammit false alarm"

Stop with the tease posts slugger

Wish I could know right now believe me it would be up here.

and then:
I wonder what happened to the article...

SO when will we know if reid/kyle were able to attach this bill? Is it tomorrow??

Welllllll. Actually, THIS is big news:

When Karak is optimistic, the rest of us are excited.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/46370043


Guys, when this thing passes and we're playing online, we'll lookback and say "all the signs were there for it to pass."

Haha I lurk the Leg forum all th time and slugger's posts are the ones I've looked forward to the most for a while now

same here^^^

The article was up for about 15 minutes and then mysteriously went offline. Not sure why:

Failing to consult with stakeholders on Internet gaming is an unacceptable gamble




Very interesting timing here. Bono Mack and Akaka both come out for the Tribal interests together here on fed. legislation. Might it be responding to something? Maybe..maybe not.

I don't know if this is good news or not. The House Rs are saying they have a backup plan of extending the cut without having to pay for it. That seems to imply there will be nothing attached to that bill. And since it's originating in the House, it could be difficult for Reid to just come in and attach the poker thing.

Our best hope has still got to be in the compromise where the extension is paid for. It's a lot easier to imagine poker being one of many things attached to the compromise, rather than poker being the single thing attached to the naked extension. The Rs will jump on Reid for caring about his special interest at that point.

Yeah. Is it reactionary and we just haven't seen what they're reacting to? Or is it pre-emptive? Either way, Bono Mack is for sure bought and paid for by the 7 tribes in her district, so she had to come out publicly with something like this.

The R's dropped the necessity to pay for the payroll tax cut ($160b I think?) but they still want to pay for other measures in the package such as unemployment benefits that might be extended.

I can't find it but I remember reading a article that said they had already come to a agreement on how to pay for that?

edit: found it http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0212/72744.html

interesting quote I read was "In fact, several sources said late Friday that the two sides made progress on a plan to pay long-term unemployment benefits"

Might it be possible that online poker is how they plan to pay for it? The article came out the same day that the rumors about the Nevada Gov. calling casino executives saying a deal had been reached.

Screwing Indians seems inevitable, even if only depriving them of a large chunk of a California monopoly.