Congresswoman Dina Titus, D-Nev., responds to a question during an editorial board meeting at the Las Vegas Sun office in Henderson Friday, Oct. 7, 2022.
Monday, March 13, 2023 | 2 a.m.
As co-chair of the Congressional Gaming Caucus, U.S. Rep. Dina Titus, D-Nev., aims to educate legislators across the country on the economic benefits of gaming, as well as advocate for policies to prevent illegal or irresponsible gambling.
The Las Vegas Sun sat down with Titus to ask about the caucus, its goals and the congresswoman’s recent announcement that she will continue trying to raise the tax-reporting threshold for slot machine winnings — which has failed to increase with inflation over 50 years and remains at an archaically low $1,200.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Can you start by just telling us a little about the Congressional Gaming Caucus?
It’s a bipartisan group of members of the House who come from states where gaming is an important part of the economy. So, I co-chair that with (Republican) Guy Reschenthaler from Pennsylvania. … It used to be (that) gaming wanted to avoid any kind of federal oversight, federal regulations, federal taxation, so they played defense, but now gaming is much more engaged in a lot of different aspects of society and the economy. So, there’s more offense that we’re playing.
Gaming is a very complex issue, though — it’s not just throwing out two dice. And so I’m in a position representing Las Vegas to be able to help other people who don’t know all the details understand it better and learn the nuances, the regulations, how policy impacts gaming and how gaming can impact the community.
What are the caucus’s priorities or goals?
The first priority is education — educating people about the benefits of gaming to the economy. It creates jobs in their districts, supports ancillary businesses in their district, brings tax revenue to their district.
The second thing is to educate people about policies that gaming can play a part in. … All hospitality and travel issues are tied to gaming because the two often go hand in hand where they exist in states. Tax issues are another thing. How gaming survived during COVID and what they can do moving forward in case of another pandemic — those are the kinds of issues that you can address across party lines.
But you’ve got to give people some real understanding of it first because they haven’t had it in their districts for very long, or maybe it’s just a smaller part of their whole scene than it is in Las Vegas.
President Joe Biden has been outspoken about banning supplemental resort fees, which could obviously have a great impact on Las Vegas and its hotel and gaming industry. What role, if any, will the gaming caucus have in that legislation?
I’m also the co-chair of the Travel and Tourism Caucus. So, you’ve got some collaboration there.
(Biden) didn’t say resort fees. He said junk fees. You need to visit real resorts to see what is offered there, but we don’t support junk fees, that’s for sure. But there are a number of ways that travel and tourism overlap with gaming. For example, airports — we want to invest in airports and keep them operating; keep them moving people; have the travel experience start from the minute they get on the plane, or the minute they get off.
You are attempting to raise the slot tax threshold. Can you walk us through that?
I’m trying to raise the limit of how much you can win on a slot machine before you have to do formal reporting. ... Issues that are going on right now in terms of gaming revenue — one of them is the limit of what you have to report hasn’t been raised for 50 years. And this is bipartisan.
The second issue is to do away with the tax on sports betting. Right now, this is an outdated thing they put in place a long time ago, in order to use that money to go after illegal gamblers, but it doesn’t anymore. I called up the Treasury Department to find out where this money was, and they couldn’t even tell me.
It mostly applied to Las Vegas to start with, and it was a .25% excise tax on sports betting, and $50 per head on people who work in sports betting. So, it encouraged people to go illegally and gamble, and also discouraged companies from hiring people because they had to pay a per-head tax on the folks that they had.
As a Nevada congresswoman, what added insight do you have into gaming that may uniquely qualify you to co-chair the caucus?
One is that we try to export what we do so well. We really have the gold standard for regulation. And so, we can help people who decide to go into the gaming business … set it up right so that companies can do well, and people feel like they can gamble without being cheated. That’s very important to the success of the operation, and nobody does that better than Nevada.
The Las Vegas Valley … has benefited greatly from gaming. Think of how many people have been hired, how many maybe jobs are created, how much tax revenue comes from gaming, the ancillary businesses — whether it’s a flower shop or a linen service — all of that’s tied to gaming. So, we’re able to show people just what the benefits of having gaming are.
And the third thing is to show how it can be a positive influence. Now, there’s still some people who think negatively about gaming, but if we spin it in a positive way and show that gaming is good corporate citizens, I think that speaks volumes about the industry.
