US Treasury and Federal Reserve Told To Drop ‘Impossible Task’
April 24th, 2008
A growing sense of futility over efforts to draft UIGEA enforcement regulations has led a bipartisan group of lawmakers from the House of Representatives to write to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, calling on them to drop their ‘impossible task’.
Reps. Barney Frank and Peter King of the Committee on Financial Services, and Ron Paul and Luis Gutierrez of the Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Policy, issued a joint letter this week, advising them to focus on the many other priorities faced by their agencies.
The letter comes after an April 2, 2008 hearing held by the Subcommittee on Domestic and International and Monetary Policy examining the proposed UIGEA regulations, where representatives from the Federal Reserve, the Treasury and the financial industry made it clear that regulations from the UIGEA are vague, confusing, burdensome, and generally unworkable.
As a result of the hearing, Chairman Frank along with Rep. Ron Paul introduced new legislation, H.R. 5767, which would prohibit the implementation of UIGEA regulations.
"The regulations, like the underlying legislation, fail to define the term ‘unlawful internet gambling’, leaving it to each financial institution to reconcile conflicting state and federal laws, court decisions, and inconsistent Department of Justice interpretations, when determining whether to process a transaction," wrote the members.
They pointed out that the agencies had struggled to formulate regulations, and that following the hearing, it had become clear that the underlying statute made the job extremely difficult, if not impossible.
"Given the many other priorities that are pending at your agencies, including the mortgage crisis, the Home Owner & Equity Protection Act and many other issues, we believe it would be imprudent for you to devote additional agency resources to this Sisyphean task, especially as we intend to vigorously pursue legislation to prevent the implementation of these regulations."
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