Harry Reid's Internet Poker Bill: How a Tack-On Would Work

With all of the buzz surrounding Harry Reid's proposed internet poker bill (new version said to be circulating today; if and when I see it, I'll highlight the changes in a new "summary" post), I thought it might be useful to remind people how this could potentially become law. Most likely it's not going to go to a floor vote in the House of Representatives and Senate. There's just not enough time left in the session, especially with so many other more pressing issues.

Instead, in a little bit of parallelism that would make J.J. Abrams proud, the bill would most likely be tacked on to a "must-pass" piece of legislation in the same the way that the UIGEA was tacked on to the SAFE Port Act. It would be appended to something like the Bush tax cut extension, something that is virtually guaranteed to be approved by both chambers of Congress.

To refresh your recollection, the SAFE Port Act was a piece of legislation designed to improve U.S. port security in an age of global terrorism. It passed the House of Representatives on May 4, 2006 by a vote of 421-2 and the Senate by a vote of 98-0 on September 14, 2006. The UIGEA was not tacked on to the bill at that time.

What happens in the U.S. legislative process once both houses have passed a bill is that if the bill passed by each chamber is not 100% identical in all respects, a bicameral conference is convened to iron out the differences. The Representatives and Senators in that conference create a uniform version of the bill. They then submit a Conference Report back to each chamber with the final approved, identical version of the bill that each chamber must again pass.

The UIGEA was tacked on to the bottom of the SAFE Port Act by the conference. The Conference Report with the final version of the SAFE Port Act (and the UIGEA!) then went back to each chamber and went up for a vote. As a matter of practice, once a bill has passed a full floor vote, the Conference Report is viewed as a formality. No surprise that the SAFE Port Act's Conference Report passed in both chambers. Two weeks later the SAFE Port Act was signed into law by President Bush with the UIGEA tacked on.

If Harry Reid's internet poker bill will be passed, it will most likely be tacked on to something like the Bush tax cut extension after both chambers of Congress have voted to approve that extension. That means we won't know if a tack-on is going to happen at the moment of the floor vote; we'll only find out once the final Conference Report is submitted and approved.