Barney Frank and Ron Paul have changed course a bit:

Frank has teamed up with the libertarian-minded Paul, who crusaded against big government during his recent White House bid, on legislation to block that law by forbidding federal officials from writing rules to implement it.

The pair introduced their bill on Friday, less than two weeks after federal officials testified to Frank’s committee that they were struggling to craft rules barring payments to illegal online gambling sites and banking industry representatives blasted the proposed rules as too onerous.

…writing rules to implement the law is bedeviling regulators. “The challenge we have is interpreting … federal laws that Congress itself isn’t sure what they mean,” Louise Roseman, a Fed official, testified on April 2 before Frank’s committee.

The banking industry has flooded the Treasury and the Fed with complaints about their proposed rules, arguing that it is too difficult for banks to sort out payments for legal wagers — such as on horse races — and those that are illegal.

“The banking system is just not set up to sort out whether one payment is a legal payment and one payment is not,” said the director of congressional affairs for the Independent Community Bankers of America , Steve Verdier. “We think the [Frank-Paul] bill would give everyone the chance to take a breath.”

Naturally, the bill has next to zero chance of passing.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 3:36 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Gambling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.