Barney Frank Makes Appearance to Talk Online Poker on The Tonight Show

Frank and Leno’s debate spanned about four minutes. Frank began the conversation by pointing out that the government could gross billions of dollars by regulating the industry, “If you have some guy who wants to play poker on the internet, we say it’s illegal… We could make billions of dollars a year by making it legal and taxing it.”

 

Leno however disagreed with the concept of online gambling. He appeared to think that Americans can not be trusted with controlling their own gambling habits, “Vegas works because you have to go to the desert to get there. You lose your money and you come home. You can’t go to the desert again until you get more money. If you’re sitting at home and you’re up late at night and you’ve got your little credit card, next thing you know, it’s like a mini bar.”

 

Leno began to make a comparison between gambling and potato chips when Frank cut him off by saying that casinos are all over the country and that HR 2267 only allows for debit and prepaid card payments as part of a Manager’s Amendment. 

 

At this point Leno chose to make a comparison between online gambling and the lottery. He noted that many states allowed the lottery to come in because of promises the companies made about the profits going towards schools and other public works. Now despite the influx of cash, educational institutions across the country are still struggling to meet ends meat.  “The problems that teachers and others face in schools can’t always be solved by money… The fact that someone oversells an idea doesn’t make it a bad idea, it makes them a bad salesman.”

 

Frank then switched tactics stating, “If you want to hit somebody or you want to burn somebody’s house or steal somebody’s car, then I want to stop you because you’re doing it to somebody else. If you want to be foolish with your own money, if you want to gamble, if you want to drink, if you want to smoke, I will tell you it’s a bad idea, but I think it’s a mistake for the government to try to stop you.”

 

The conversation then quickly digressed to other issues until the topic of kids not being exposed to internet gambling came up. At this point Frank said, “I do agree you can limit this to kids and in fact we’ve done that. Joe Camel has disappeared. As a general rule, the government shouldn’t be trying to live people’s lives for them. You protect people from other people hurting them.”  

 

Congress is currently on recess. They will return on September 13th and the legislative body will have just 20 days to tackle the issue internet gambling before its target adjournment of October 8th. 

 

With such a short time frame there is still a chance the bill will be put on the back burner until next year. We’ll keep posted on the latest developments.