The Associated Press is reporting that Senator Bill Frist (a/k/a the guy that wants to kill online poker) is planning on attaching the proposed online poker ban to a massive defense bill that authorizes military action in Iraq and Afghanistan.
These little political manuevers aren't new. They're the reason you have fancy new roads and bridges in your hometown, along with a host of other public works projects that if given the choice, you'd never have agreed to use your tax dollars for. But to a Congressman, it's a way to come home during election time and point out all the great stuff you've done for your district, no matter how many boneheaded decisions you made on issues of national importance. They love to leave openings for themselves to slip bills that on their own would never get Congressional approval through to the President's desk.
Typically when a bill goes through the House, the Rules Committee closes it to all unrelated admendments. This means that, for example, no other House member can hijack a bill to provide low-cost prescriptions to the elderly with a ban on abortions. It keeps House business flowing smoothly, and ensures that proposed legislation isn't bogged down by other unrelated issues. Rarely though will you see a defense bill come out of committee with a closed admendment rule. If you're looking to tack on a billion or so in pork, a big budget defense bill is the place to do it. Throw on a few bridges or a job for your wife's second cousin - everyone else is going to do it, and no one is going to vote the defense package down because of it, for fear of being the guy who is anti-defense.
And in addition to pork, if you've got some legislation that you don't think you can get passed on its own, a big bill like this one offers you a prime opportunity to quietly slip it through.
So where do we go from here? For starters, the AP mentions a couple of things that stand out to me. One, that this is the compromise version of the defense bill. That means that the Senate passed a version of the bill, the House passed a different version, and then both chambers got together to come up with this new version, which now goes back to both chambers for a new vote. Can we be hopeful here? Maybe. Not even the government major in me wants to sift through three versions of a defense bill to see what is different between them, but I don't think it's a stretch at all to say that the stand-alone compromise version (i.e., without the online poker ban attached) would have passed House and Senate easily. There may be some Represenatives and Senators that were on the fence with the bills they passed previously, and compromises made have just completely turned them against it, but it's highly unlikely that there are enough of them to kill the bill. Are there enough of them to turn against the compromise bill if it comes along with this online poker ban? I very seriously doubt it. These bills passed by wide margins, and for many Representatives, it's not worth risking the dreaded "soft on defense" label at campaign time by taking a stand on the online poker issue, and voting no for the bill.
The part that really gets my curiosity up is where it's stated that Frist is pushing for an "approach not as sweeping as the House measure". You may recall that earlier this year the House passed their version of the ban, and it has since been in legislative limbo, awating action from the Senate. I've never gotten the feeling that this ban was a legislative priority for the Senate, despite the claims of the Majority Leader. While it may be important to him and his 2008 Presidential bid, I think we as players, along with the PPA, have spoken up enough that the average Senator would prefer to let the issue die quietly, without ever announcing an opinion one way or another.
And that's where it gets interesting. This ban has always been about Frist and the other bill sponsors being able to sell themselves as the one that protected your children from the evils of online gambling. Understandably, few Representatives want to stand up and speak against the bill, because at that point, their opponent's campaign adds just write themselves. But are there enough of them, with enough clout in other arenas, to get Frist to chill for a while? Is this why he's now apparently pushing a watered down version of the ban?
I'll keep my eye out for details of the new version, but I expect they're being hammered out right now and we won't know what changes Frist has made until he's ready for it to see the spotlight. This move by him does have me worried, but I'm remaining a little optimistic until we know for sure what it is he's trying to push through.
