Senator Jon Kyl’s Bad Bet

On the heels of the huge GOP victory in the Massachusetts Senate race, Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) decided to stand up to the Obama administration with one of the strongest weapons at his disposal — he halted Senate votes on Treasury Department nominees.

As there are a number of areas where the conservative movement takes issues with administration objectives, this is a target-rich environment.  A strong stand here could show America what the Republican Party stands for and what the party will fight for.  So, is Kyl standing up for improvements in the health care bill, reduced federal spending, or limits on federal power?  No, he is not.  Sadly, Sen. Kyl is wasting this powerful, one-shot weapon to register his dissatisfaction with the administration’s granting of a delay in implementing Internet poker and gaming-related financial regulations — a delay that was requested by his fellow Republicans.

The law for which Kyl pushed with so much vigor for so many years is fatally flawed.  Despite a decade of trying, beginning with his attempt to add a national online poker and gaming prohibition to the Crime Prevention Act of 1995, Kyl found himself unable to pass an online gaming prohibition through Congress.  In 2006, he settled for a law prohibiting money from going from U.S. financial transactions to sites offering “unlawful Internet gambling.” To move this through the Senate, Kyl had this bill tacked on to the must-pass SAFE Port Act in the middle of the night just as the 2006 Congressional term was coming to a close.  Thus, the Senate never even voted on this as a free-standing bill.

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