According to an article posted today on Pokerfuse.com indicates that internet poker legislation in the United States is far from a priority at the moment and thus unlikely to be passed during the upcoming lame duck sessions of Congress.
For those who aren’t American or don’t understand lame duck Congress, lame duck Congress sessions of occur after the November elections when elected congressmen are approaching the end of their tenure and try to pass legislation before their term expires. In this case the legislation poker players want passed for this lame duck Congress would be the legalization of internet poker.
According to the one of the main proponents of the internet poker bill, Sen. Harry Reid, there are more important things to focus on, mainly the economy. It’s obvious the American economy sucks, so there’s no need to go into it, but basically both sides of Congress are too occupied with fixing the economy to be concerned with internet poker.
According to the article, Sen Reid further stipulates that if he could get “13-15 Republican votes” the bill would move forward, but at this current moment in time he has “none”. The internet poker bill is currently known as Reid/Kyl. The bill would make most internet gambling illegal with the exception of online poker.
Obviously this spells bad news for online poker since it has been nearly 17 months since Black Friday and most proponents of online poker believed that internet poker in the United States would be legal and regulated by now. However, with this news about the bill being at the near bottom of things Congress is concerned with, it seems that the United States could be waiting at the very least another six months before poker is both legalized and sites are playable again in America.