Unlawful Internet Gambling and Enforcement Act.

The Act was passed at midnight the day Congress adjourned for the 2006 elections. Though a bill with the gambling wording was previously debated and passed by the House of Representatives, the SAFE Port Act (H.R. 4954) as passed by the House on May 4th (by a vote of 421-2) and the U.S. Senate on September 14th (98-0), bore no traces of the Unlawful Internet Gambling and Enforcement Act that was included in the SAFE Port Act signed into law by George W. Bush on October 13th, 2006. The UIGEA was added in Conference Report 109-711 (submitted at 9:29pm on September 29, 2006), which was passed by the House by a vote of 409-2 and by the Senate by unanimous consent on September 30, 2006. Due to H. Res. 1064, the reading of this conference report was waived.

Among the more prominent Congressional supporters of the Act were Jim Leach, a former chairman of the House Banking Committee and Rep. Robert Goodlatte [R-VA], who co-authored H.R. 4411 (the Internet Gambling Prohibition and Enforcement Act). Bill Frist, majority leader of the Senate, and Jon Kyl are both credited with expediting the UIGEA's passage through the Senate. Though the SAFE Port Act's provisions related to Internet gambling were drawn exclusively from H.R. 4411, significant portions were removed, including text relating to the Federal Wire Act.

A prior version of the gambling part of the bill passed the House in 1999 but failed in the Senate due largely to the influence of lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

It is worth noting that Michigan Congressman John Conyers and Nevada Congresswoman Shelley Berkley are slowly working on a drive to regulate online gaming.

With the November elections swinging major control to the Democrats, and some of the main driving forces behind the Act no longer around, it looks like there could be less of a will to enforce this bill, so who knows what will happen over the coming years?