Barney Frank has been trying to repeal the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) for a while, introducing legislation as far back as 2007. UIGEA was passed in 2006. Frank currently has a bill in the House of Representatives that would legalize and regulate online gambling, but it has already been delayed and now, sources say, it will have to wait.

Back in January of this year, as President Obama was sworn in and the Democrats took a more commanding majority of the House and Senate, Barney Frank announced that he would introduce legislation immediately that would repeal UIGEA. He then pushed it back to Easter before he eventually introduced the bill in May. Still, he kept insisting that his bill would be discussed by September and passed this year. Now some experts are saying not to expect anything until 2010 at the earliest.

In an interview with the Las Vegas Review Journal, Richard Bryan, a former Nevada Senator and current gaming attorney, stated that he believes Frank’s bill won’t even be discussed on the floor until next year. The reason, he said, was due to Congress’s notoriously slow pace and due to the importance of voting on much larger priorities, such as healthcare reform.

While it’s true that Congress generally takes a long time to come to a decision, the current Congress has been a little different, several times hurrying to pass a bill that no one took the time to read, let alone have informed discussions about. The rushed bills were usually under orders from Obama, stating that it was an emergency and that they had to act right away. Repealing an online gambling ban, though, even for Obama, would be tough to spin into an emergency. Especially now. The American people already feel like they’ve been duped by the “stimulus” bill and those who know about it are angered by the cap and trade bill. Convincing the people that legalizing online gambling was not only a priority but an emergency would be a tough task, even for a master hypnotist like Obama. Therefore, it is likely that Bryan is right.

If so, it’s bad news for those who want Frank to succeed. The reason he, and others with a stake in the subject, are so confident that Frank would succeed now when he failed in 2007 is because there are a lot of sympathetic Democrats in the House. If the bill isn’t discussed until 2010, it had better be early because it’s an election year. Midterm elections are not favorable to the party in the White House. Combine that with Obama’s sinking approval rating, the massive healthcare protests, and the people’s disgust with Congress and you can bet there will be a lot of Democrats losing their jobs in November. Even if Frank’s bill comes to a vote before then, with gambling being such a controversial issue among constituents, many members of Congress up for reelection may choose to avoid voting for the bill even if they agree with it.

So I guess the moral of the story is: If you were really excited about the passage of Frank’s bill, don’t get your hopes up.

Tags: Barney Frank, Las Vegas Review Journal, Richard Ryan, UIGEA, Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act

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