Re: Just spoke to a Frist aide
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Congress will return for a “lame duck” session in mid-November where this issue may take center stage again. “The Senator has made Internet Gambling a priority before he exits the Senate and I will confirm that he is actively searching for a way to succeed.”
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I sincerely don't mean to be a killjoy, but this is really bad news. Like I mentioned in another thread, I fear Frist will have a vastly easier time getting this attached to some other piece of legislation than he did with the DoD bill. We got lucky on this one in that some of the more powerful members in the conference were staunchly opposed to unrelated riders, but it's going to be tougher sledding when a lame duck session considers something more pork-filled with all sort of other miscellaneous stuff attached.
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Well, we will see. One thing that Tim Curran (editor of Roll Call) speculated about when I saw him on C-SPAN today is that if the Democrats take over in one or both chambers, they could simply fillibuster everything, pass a continuing resolution to keep the government funded through January, and take everything up again in the next Congress. Absent that, I think it goes without saying that the work of lobbyists is going to be very important in the next 6-8 weeks. There are certainly a lot of political favors handed out in lame duck sessions and omnibus spending bills, but sometimes these favors are to corporoate interests rather than constituents. I suspect that if the gaming and banking lobbies (no offense to grass-roots groups like NROG, but I'm thinking AGA/ABA here) really want to stop this then they have a good chance of doing so.
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