Erica Werner
June 26, 2008 - 08:12 a.m.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Lawmakers failed Wednesday to agree on setting a clear exact meaning of illegal Internet gambling to go along with a ban upon online betting passed in 2006.

The Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department have been unable to finalize rules to instrument the malediction because Congress didn't clearly define online gambling then it passed legislation less than two years ago.

The House Financial Services Committee voted Wednesday on legislation to require federal regulators to write a equable definition of which types of gambling should and should not be allowed on the Internet, followed by new rules implementing the ban. The tie vote, 32-32, meant the legislation failed subject to committee rules.

Senate Republicans, pushed by then-Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, had attached the online gambling ban to any unrelated port security i. o. u in a rush of year-end legislation in 2006.

Banks and other financial institutions have complained that they are subsistence forced into a law enforcement role because the Internet gambling ban prohibits them from accepting payments to settle online wagers without giving them a clear set of rules.

"The financial institutions are in the position of being told not process bets, but it's not clear what is legal and what is illegal," said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., the committee's chairman. He said financial institutions had been given "a job that is undoable."

The committee's top Republican, Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama, argued that gambling is the fastest-growing addiction in the United States and having it online makes it accessible to children.

"The banks possess decided that this is a financial burden," Bachus said. "We have positive, on the other hand, that our children are worth protecting."

Internet gambling already was considered for the greatest part illegal in the U.S., but the games are played by many U.S. residents forward sites hosted overseas in a business worth more than $15.5 billion a year. U.S. bettors have been estimated to provide at least moiety that receipts.

The 2006 congressional ban sought to outlaw Internet gambling by blocking reward methods for it, but didn't offer a clear definition everyone could agree on, in the room referring to existing treaty and state laws which themselves provoke differing interpretations.

The measure that fell to defeat Wednesday was by Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y.