David White: When Barney Frank starts making sense

Hugh Hewitt, the Club for Growth, and other conservative bloggers lauded Frank’s speech, and GOPBloggers.org summed it up by writing, “You know the GOP’s fiscal policy is dismal when Barney Frank makes sense.”

And just as a stopped clock tells the right time twice each day, Frank is once again making a whole lot more sense than most members of congress.

Last month, the House of Representatives passed a measure that would ban the vast majority of online gaming by prohibiting credit card companies and banks from sending funds to overseas gambling Web sites, most of which are headquartered overseas because Internet gambling within the U.S. has already been deemed illegal under the Wire Act of 1961. Industry experts estimate that revenues from online gambling total about $12 billion each year, of which between $4 billion and $6 billion comes from the U.S.

Although political analysts consider the bill an election-year ploy — it is unlikely to gain any traction in the Senate, and most sites only accept money orders to avoid U.S. regulation — 115 Democrats joined just over 200 Republicans in supporting the Republican-sponsored legislation.

The Democratic support is hardly a surprise. From cigarette and alcohol taxes to Social Security and other statist solutions, their Party has long been a supporter of nanny-state paternalism. But once upon a time, before the oxymoronical “Big Government Conservatives” took power, Republican support for such measures was anathema to the GOP.

Back then, many Republicans would have joined congressional members like Frank who lashed out at the bill’s supporters by stating, “If people want to do something, and it doesn’t hurt anybody else, we ought to mind our own business. This is a bill to tell adults not to do something because people in this body disapprove of what they do.”

Socially conservative Republicans would have certainly taken issue with gambling, but they would have preferred leaving the issue to their state and local governments. After all, federal usurpation of their personal affairs was offensive.

That, of course, was the impetus behind Grover Norquist’s “leave-us-alone” coalition and the reason why conservatives and libertarians were able to forge a longstanding political alliance in the Republican Party. From homeschoolers to gun owners, from churchgoers to taxpayers, Republican voters just wanted the federal government out of their lives. Alas, only 17 Republicans voted against the anti-gambling measure.

Why? Because the leave-us-alone legacy has vanished. Today, we have a president who, as Andy Card claimed in September 2004, sees America as a “10-year-old child” in need of parental protection and a Republican party that continues to support expanding the size, scope, and authority of the federal government at a rate that has never before been seen.

Apparently, Washington D.C.’s lawmakers think personal responsibility and common sense have become such rarities that only their infallible wisdom can protect us from the perils of the world. How else to explain funneling millions of dollars to high-school drug testing and abstinence programs, enacting the largest expansion of Medicare in history, and declaring a War on Pornography? And if this latest bill sets a precedent, federal intervention into the Wild West of the World Wide Web may have actually just started.

For example, one can’t legally purchase drug paraphernalia in the United States, but the Canadian-headquartered Blunt Brothers is happy to take credit cards and ship its goods to the States. Meanwhile, at GunBroker.com, buyers are simply advised to “comply with the laws of your country, city, and state.” Never mind the Gun Control Act of 1968 or the Brady Bill. Cuban cigars are sold at a host of online tobacco shops, and on eBay, counterfeit goods abound.

And considering that the nation’s credit card companies stand to lose millions of dollars each year if the federal government asks them to closely monitor every single consumer purchase, one would think that our elected representatives would see the wisdom of leaving us to our own devices. After all, they apparently see some value in protecting horse racing and state lotteries (which are exempted from the bill) and leaving casinos in Atlantic City, Las Vegas, Indian Reservations, and on riverboats untouched.

But then again, in the first five years of the Bush presidency, federal spending increased by 45 percent. In an era where every single cabinet agency continues to grow at an alarming rate and few lawmakers take issue with government wiretapping and data-mining, perhaps Congress has another idea: If a new bureaucracy is created to monitor the credit card purchases of U.S. citizens, then none of us will be able to break the law. How wonderfully Orwellian.

David White, a former assistant editor at The American Enterprise, is a writer in Washington.