Insight on the News: Wolf's gambling commission has big eyes but no teeth

A rambunctious public-policy posse is riding after the culprit-of-the-month, legalized gambling. But this political constabulary asserts, curiously, that it only intends to peer intently at the varmint after cutting it off at the pass.

The prairie-fire spread of legalized gambling has alarmed the guardians on Capitol Hill of late and, by golly, they aren't going to just sit there and do absolutely nothing. Hey, kids, let's have ... a national commission! Virginia Republican Rep. Frank Wolf is leading the posse.

"Twenty years ago, gambling was legal only in Nevada and New Jersey," he notes. "Today, only Utah and Hawaii have no form of legalized gambling."

And? "Many communities have been misled and duped into accepting gambling - left to defend themselves against a well-financed industry that often hired prominent lawyers, lobbyists and political consultants' "Good heavens, those poor boobs beyond the Beltway!

So Wolf is flogging a bill, HR 497, to establish a "National Gambling Impact and Policy Commission." A Senate version is cosponsored by Indiana Republican Richard Lugar and Illinois Democrat Paul Simon.

The commission would exist for three years to "take an objective, credible and factual study of the effects of one of our nation's fastest-growing industries." The study would cover how casino and riverboat gambling, on-line computer betting, lotteries and American Indiansponsored gaming are affecting the pulse of their various communities.

Doubtless the commission would be well staffed, handsomely paid an inhabit spacious Washington offices. For such a shining cause, what's a few dozen million of your taxes? Loose change in federal terms!

The point of this exercise? Nothing really, Wolf solemnly contends. His bill would "not tax gambling. It does not regulate gambling. It place no new mandates on gambling." What it would do is provide a "hard look at [gambling's] effects on business, crime, local governments and families."

The Virginia congressman then unleashed a litany of anecdotal horror stories about addicts who spent their bean-and-bread bucks on lotto or whatever, the adjunctive cost of law enforcement, insinuation of bad guys into the scene and the corruption of public officials.

Well, yes. Has anyone over age 7 imagined that legalized gambling doesn't carry substantial baggage, social and economic? When the commission publishes its voluminous report, does anyone suppose that the feds will merely regard it as informational? Perhaps the FDA will decide gambling is another "health issue" and clamor for regulatory jurisdiction.

Of course, gambling is not a very productive activity, unless you're the owner of one of the joints. However, as a New York legislator said years ago when that state was debating o track betting, if you don't let them bet on horses, they'll bet on elephants."

Besides, anyone who's never put $2 on a nag, or shot craps for cigarettes on a G.I. blanket between paydays, has led a very sheltered life and possibly missed a fling that can be searingly educative.

The remarkable increase in casino gambling and the variety of legal numbers games admittedly is not a terribly agreeable phenomenon. One reason legalized gambling has spread like crabgrass, however, is the voracious appetite of governments for new sources of revenue. For that, Congress and the Frank Wolfs of long tenure are liable essentially through a history of unfunded mandates and myriad thou-shalts imposed upon the states.

Politicians without the will to resist relentless demands for more entitlements, additional government services and grants and guarantees, all enacted with bare thoughtfulness, are the varmints - or worse - who gain office with glib promises of all of the above. As cumulative tax levels have reached the ionosphere and political promises of better beer and bigger pretzels continue, legalized gambling was and is a temptation to which state governments eagerly can succumb.

In other words, this is a posse chasing itself.

Any state that feels overwhelmed can end or limit legalized gambling tomorrow. If, that is, elected officials have the nerve to focus on the actual culprit - too much government. Or, even riskier, the pols can heed those who argue that Americans are undertaxed and legislate higher levies to finance, say, midnight badminton and squash for the bored suburbanites?

It may be, as Wolf and his 70 cosponsors in the House evidently feel, that this is a nation of 250 million children and Congress must get us out of the playpen. But wasn't there a national commission on gambling not even 20 years ago - in 1977, to be precise? It reported that "scared money don't win, evil women drink gin" - hmm, no, that's an old country and western tune. Any new commission doubtless would hyperventilate and inform us of the obvious - that there always is a stiff price to be paid in catering to the something-for-nothing impulse that lurks in most hearts. Mr. Wolf could bet on it.

By Woody West

Associate Editor