Nevada contingent opposes latest Web gaming bill

WASHINGTON -- If Internet gambling is legalized and taxed, Nevada could receive more than $300 million during the next decade to boost education and job training for foster children in the state, according to advocates of a bill introduced this week in the House.

Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., who offered the bill, described it as a revision of legislation he introduced last year to tax Internet gambling companies if they are licensed and regulated by the Department of Treasury.

"The gamblers want it; the poker players want it because they want a system in the United States, run in the United States, governed by our laws rather than floating out there in the world of the Internet," McDermott said Thursday.

This makes a good "marriage," McDermott said, with his own goal of finding money to help foster children approaching adulthood.

"I took this up because I'm looking for money to deal with aging foster kids and kids who don't have health care and don't have housing and they're 17 or 18 years old and they're out in the street and they're homeless," McDermott said.

The Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative estimates McDermott's bill could produce billions for states, including $336 million for Nevada over the next 10 years.

Jeffrey Sandman, a spokesman for the initiative, said it is "encouraging" that Congress "is seeking to regulate Internet gambling and put the billions in new revenue to good use."

But Nevada lawmakers and lobbyists gave McDermott's bill the cold shoulder.

Rep. Jon Porter, R-Nev., issued a statement saying the bill would set "a harmful precedent" and described it as "a frivolous attack on the gaming community to pay for services that local governments, states and the federal government should already be providing."

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., who has called for a one-year study of Internet gambling by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, called McDermott's new bill "a classic case of putting the cart before the horse."

The American Gaming Association, which represents Nevada casinos and is neutral on Internet gambling, said McDermott's bill "would seem to be at odds with one of the core principles of the AGA, which is to protect states' rights to individually tax and regulate gambling." The AGA reiterated its support for Berkley's study bill.

McDermott scoffed at the notion of a study of Internet gambling.

"My experience has been that, generally, studies are a way of wasting a year," McDermott said. "We need the money. We know what the issue is."

McDermott describes his legislation as supplementary to a bill by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., that would overturn a ban on Internet gambling and require the Treasury Department to regulate online betting.

"Without his bill, my bill doesn't go anywhere," McDermott said.

Although he acknowledged his bill is unlikely to pass Congress this year, McDermott said he plans to re-introduce it in 2009.

"Oh yeah, I'll be back on day one," he said.