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By Karoun Demirjian (contact) 
Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2012 | 2 a.m.
Related coverage
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If the recent airing of the dirty laundry — including the trading of public insults between Sens. Harry Reid and Dean Heller — is any indication, the delicate effort to legalize online poker is mired in deep political quicksand.
While that show has been playing for the public, however, lawmakers are continuing to work on a backup plan, in which they hope to avoid explosive public fights altogether and quietly resolve the poker standoff behind closed doors.
And it appears Plan B — “or D or E,” as Reid Chief of Staff David Krone put it in an interview last Friday — may actually have been the plan all along.
Back in January, just a few weeks after the Department of Justice released an interpretation of the Wire Act that would inspire more than a dozen states to start pursuing their own Internet gaming ventures, Krone sat down to dinner with his then-counterpart in the House, Barry Jackson, former chief of staff to House Speaker John Boehner.
They came up with a plan, Krone said, in which Reid and Boehner could rein in that Wire Act reading while legalizing interstate Internet poker, all without too many fireworks.
The online poker effort being pushed by Nevada’s gaming industry is twofold. First, Congress must halt the proliferation of state-based online gambling made possible last year by the Department of Justice’s interpretation of the Wire Act. Then, Congress must legalize online poker and craft a national scheme for regulating it.
The two-pronged strategy is complicated: While it’s fairly easy to find a filibuster-proof majority of lawmakers who support walking back the Wire Act, lawmakers who then support giving poker special treatment are in shorter supply.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and David Krone, right, a member of his staff, meet in Reid's office on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., Monday, Dec. 21, 2009.
But Krone said he and Jackson saw a way around all that: by doing the bulk of the detail work in their own chambers instead of on the floor.
When Reid’s office drafted the poker bill, they produced two versions: a full-fledged bill and a bare-bones “placeholder,” designed to be inserted innocuously into a much larger bill and touching on just enough gaming and poker topics to let lawmakers discuss them in a conference process.
The existence of two versions is important — and not just because a summary of the full-fledged bill has been circulating in public for weeks while the the placeholder language is still under wraps.
The conference process the placeholder version is designed for is how Congress reconciles matters when the House and the Senate have passed related, but not identical, bills. Traditionally, special committees are appointed to do that work, but lately, it has been left to Reid and Boehner.
They can’t bring up new topics in conference. But they can negotiate deals around topics that already are in the bills.
That’s why the placeholder is potentially critical — if a poker placeholder is in even just one version of any Senate or House bill, Reid and Boehner can hash out a deal and deliver it back to the House and Senate for part-and-parcel approval.
But, Krone maintained, it would only work if the Senate went first.
“You guys would need to go first,” Krone said Jackson told him.
A spokesman for Boehner’s office was not able to confirm Tuesday whether Jackson ever did make that deal.
But Heller doesn’t agree that Senate-first is the way forward.
Heller wants to take advantage of the conference process, too. But he thinks that instead of insisting that the Senate lead the way with placeholder language, the House should be allowed to pass a bill getting rid of all online gaming. Then Reid and company can use the conference process to get special dispensation for poker.
“As discussed, it would be beneficial for the House of Representatives to first address this issue and then proceed with Senate action,” Heller wrote in a letter to Reid on Sept. 10.
Sens. Dean Heller, left, and Harry Reid attend a Memorial Day ceremony in Boulder City on May 30, 2011.
On the one hand, he has a point. The Senate already tried once this year to get an Internet gaming placeholder inserted into larger legislation: the Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill.
Emails between Krone and Heller’s former Chief of Staff Mac Abrams document how lawmakers tried, but ultimately failed, to do just that.
But on the other, in Heller’s scenario, getting the two sides into a conference room potentially is much harder — and much riskier for Nevada’s most important industry.
Heller’s scenario would allow House Republicans a tantalizing opportunity to vent their spleen by voting to outlaw all forms of Internet gaming while also taking jabs at three of their favorite targets: President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and Reid.
The result — a bill with no poker carve-out — would be catastrophic for Nevada, unless Reid is able to counter with a pro-poker answer from the Senate, which would force the all-important conference to take place.
But right now, no one is sure they have the votes to guarantee that outcome.
Reid and Heller have been unable thus far to put together the 60 senators needed to give online poker clear sailing — a fact for which Reid publicly blames Heller and his inability to come up with 15 Republicans willing to vote for a poker-only bill.
But Krone admitted Friday that Reid isn’t entirely sure of their 45 votes either, as they have yet to conduct a whip count or put names to paper. That means that proponents of web poker cannot be sure their interests would be safe under Heller’s scenario. Reid would need a solid coalition of at least 40 to guarantee that any bill coming from the House would be dead on arrival in the Senate — and then 60 to get a bill of his own through.
Krone said it would be tough to get any poker bill — placeholder or otherwise — through Congress during the post-election lame duck period. At this point, the very public flaps about online poker have put lawmakers who are opposed to legalizing the practice on high alert.
If the Senate goes first, the most likely vehicle for poker legislation will be a high-profile tax bill Congress must consider by year’s end.
But if not, Reid said last Friday that he wasn't opposed to the House going first in principle.
“But let them pass the damn thing!" Reid told reporters. "They’ve been waiting for a year.”
Unemployment at 8.3 and this is what Reid is worry about
Reid shutdown the Senate so nothing can pass
It is wrong for Reid to pass a law that limits the gambling profit to just Nevada
Reid did not like it when Yucca was passed for Nevada
Who would work with Reid
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid lashed out at Mitt Romney's faith during a conference call with reporters, saying he is "not the face of Mormonism" and suggesting he has tarnished the religion, that Reid agrees with claims that Romney has "sullied" the Latter-day Saints faith.
"He's coming to a state where there are a lot of members of the LDS Church," Reid also said ahead of Romney's arrival Friday. "They understand that he is not the face of Mormonism."
What part of NO do you all not understand, Reid and Heller or any Washington law maker wanting to legalize online poker at the Federal level?
Legalizing online poker at the Federal level reminds one of the movie Frankenstein. Doctor Frankenstein was so proud of his creation of bringing life back to dead tissue, making a life with a few assembled body parts. You all remember, the Doctor used the brain from a dead criminal. The proud creation got out, yes, the monster got out, went out into the world, amongst normal people, who thought the monster was normal just a different, until the monster started to utter words. The monster was not well received by towns people, the monster got mad started destroying things and the town people got together and put the monster down. And then as you know, the towns people went after the Doctor and put him down!!!
This is as plain as it gets for all the thick headed people who think all money is good money. And it's not!
Remember these names for the history books, the people willingly trying to assemble this monster: Reid Chief of Staff David Krone Barry Jackson, former chief of staff to House Speaker John Boehner. Harry Reid and Dean Heller.
The online poker initiative will surely come back to hurt the gaming industry, if not all together stop the expansion of gaming in the USA. Legalizing online poker at the Federal level is a big mistake!
"That means that proponents of web poker cannot be sure their interests would be safe under Heller's scenario."
By this you mean Nevada Casinos and Nevada State Government, and of course the Federal Government. Because, you see, Reid's bill is completely devoid of the things the consumer wants.
In this big discussion of what to do about internet poker, the consumer, the poker player, is being left out of the discussion. Rules are being made by the clueless, with input only, it seems, from corporate interests.
Reid's bill is terrible, from a consumer's perspective, and should be opposed. He should go back to the drawing board and try again. He should put the consumer first. It is after all, the responsibility of our government to see to the interests of the people first.
Here's one of Nevada's Senators at work.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmD2_riqp...
Reids desperate attempt to payback the Nevada casinos for the 2010 election is fading into the sunset.
Simple fact is, there is no federal statue that makes internet poker illegal, and everyone knows it. The NFL used their power to have Marty Gold sneak a garbage finance regulation onto an unrelated bill (UIGEA)in the middle of the night, and had former legal rep. Eric Holder use his weight to illegally seize funds and harass PokerStars, but the courts are coming into line, and our beloved PokerStars will be making compacts with individual states and citizens will once again enjoy the freedoms that they're entitled too under the Constitution to play the greatest game in the world, at the greatest online poker site there is.
Warning, warning. All the State "leaders" are budgeting and "functioning" as if the sunset taxes are here to stay forever and ever. They're even talking about additional taxes. When will it ever end? Can they think of another way to discourage economic recovery in the region?
And has there ever been any sensible reason to believe Reid has ever had anything close to even a simple majority of his own party on board with this? I don't think so. Including even the leader of his own party in the House, or his #2 in the Senate, the Majority Whip? If anything was to pass either body it would far more likely be tightening up existing law to prevent online gambling, which continues to be the majority position in both parties in both houses, as it is with the public at large.
And this mythical rush of states to jump through a presumed opening in the Wire Act due to a DOJ memo? Where is this occurring exactly? I count exactly four jurisdictions nationwide, and no other realistic prospects. It has died everywhere but Nevada, New Jersey, District of Columbia, and Delaware. And this imaginary rush will not be encouraged to magically come to life when the market in those locations fails to generate significant revenue.
Ok well let me see... A poker bill that would create tons of jobs and tons of tax dollars that the government and states are in great need of. To all that are opposed, so it is ok for a man or woman to go into a casino and lose their life savings, but it is not ok for someone to do the same in the privacy of their own home. Get a grip people. As long as it is heavily regulated to be sure minors are not wagering or that it is fair, internet gambling should be legal. We do live in the United States of America right? The land of the free?
Tons! And oodles too! Mustn't forget the oodles!
Ehh, except that the numbers we have from the Dept of Justice prosecutions indicate the actual market for it is tiny, and online play doesn't involve significant staffing after the software is written.
But bring tons of oodles since the pink unicorn is coming, and it'll surely get passed real soon! 'Cause this isn't like 2007, or 2008, or 2009, or 2010, or 2011...