FOCUS ON THE FAMILY TAKES US AUTHORITIES TO TASK ON UIGEA DELAYS

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Anti-gambling body says the US Treasury is dragging its feet on regulation drafting

The Focus on the Family organisation is up in arms about the delays in introducing regulations for the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act signed into law last October. The legislation mandated the US Treasury and the US AG's offices to jointly prepare enforcement regulations for the act, which seeks to disrupt financial transactions to online gambling companies, within 270 days.

Focus on the Family spokesmen say that the drafting of regulations has dragged on for months, and accuse the U.S. Treasury Department of dragging its feet in writing regulations to give the UIGEA teeth.

Republican Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas went to see Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson this week to ask about the delay, but does not elaborate on Paulson's response. “Are they going to be committed to enforcing this law," Brownback asked, "and putting the personnel in place that it needs?"

Chad Hills, gambling analyst for Focus on the Family Action, claims that writing regulations shouldn’t be too burdensome. “We estimate that about five federal employees working on this could keep and maintain a list of Internet gambling operations,” he told Family News in Focus, the organisation's journal.

Tom McClusky of the Family Research Council claimed without specifying the detail that "intense pressure" had been brought to bear via the Treasury Department to water down the restrictions.

"The gambling forces seem to have some friends in those departments that might have been helping write some of those regulations," he accused. “It’s almost setting up a fourth branch of government – a bureaucracy branch – that decides what laws they want to enforce and what laws they want to basically rewrite.”