European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - November 3, 1985, Darmstadt, Hesse                                In october tie May have its of to hit $1.4 billion part of the profit of Congress looking 4, have pushed for a Senate committee lotteries last year. Ton Bureau Socrat who supports a a Minnesota lose biggest Gamble we can take. -. But these Are options for those of us who Are not poor. So looking Down our noses and saying that the poor should be deprived of the Opportunity to engage i the kind of recreation and excitement they want i just reject that attitude. 0. Do you play the lottery in Ohio a. Not very often. But a year ago when the Ohio lottery got up to $24 million it seemed that everyone i talked to was playing it people who were not for the most part poor. This is an indication that it we had a National lottery the participation would Cut More across hit economic spectrum than it has in some cases today. Q. Would a National lottery Hurt state lotteries a. That would have to be taken into consideration in -. Any legislation. The first thing you have to have in a a a tonal lottery is an agreement whereby states could opt out of it. Many states in the South for example would probably not want to be part of it. For states that do participate there might be some a and of Revenue sharing. I be talked to members of the a ursary. And the idea of changeling it for raising reve 1 pc not for the government is a Good one. 3,1085 Dave Durenberger fairness would go out the window ill Melon. Why do you think a National lottery is unwise answer. One reason is that i resist the notion of the National government or any government endorsing a process that is not totally honest because it can t be and that appeals to an instinct in people that can Only rarely be rewarded. It uses the expectation that i could be a big Winner to in effect bilk people out of an awful lot of Money. Q. To bilk them out of Money a. Maybe i should t use that word. Even though the Public does t agree none of these programs would be successful if they told the truth. Nobody Ever tells people How High the Odds Are against winning. Nor Are they Ever told the True value of the winnings. So Many prizes Are 20-year payoffs and things like that so the current value of a winning ticket can be much lower than its advertised value. Q. But in t it True that other countries have lotteries and Are presumably Happy with them a. Even if everybody in the world ran them i would still raise the same questions about them As a govern ment fund Rall no operation in the United states. Even if i approved of a lottery i would question its value on that ground. A National lottery might have some diminishing effect on the states lotteries especially if the National lottery is made to seem a lot More interesting than the state ones. If you want to raise Money for government a lottery is the least efficient Way to do it. You really can t get More than 35 percent of the individual s contribution to Benefit government because you have to have at least half of it going into prizes to keep them big enough and 10 to 15 percent always has to be committed just to the lottery administration. Also it s like raising the cigarette tax just another Effort to nationalize the tax Revenue base in this country while we re in the process of de nationalizing our spend ing. We re sending All the spending obligations Back to state and local governments but the Federal govern ment is nationalizing All the Revenue bases. Q. You have said that a lottery could not succeed without hard sell promotion and misleading advertising. Why is this a. To do the volume to get the prizes up to be intriguing enough the game Itsell also needs to be a Challenge. At least that s what psychologists told us in the hearings. Bingo raises Only so much Money because Only so Many people can keep up their interest in Bingo mainly the addicts. The same thing would be True of a lottery. When you get some people hooked on it. Then you be got a r Arket. But you can t raise the kind of prize Money or  Lor Public services that would justify having the government do this unless you get a broader Cross Section of people the non addicted to buy the chances. The Only Way to keep up their interest is by coming up with a new game every year or so one that is More interesting More challenging. O. Do you think there s anything immoral about a National lottery a the part that bothers me is he addiction. There is enough evidence of dependency in this country whether it s that people can t quit smoking or they have to go through treatment programs for drinking or the dependency that gambling addicts have. I m not talking about the Guys who go to the Racetrack. I m talking about the lower and Middle income folks who show up in the Rich Bingo basement every thursday night gambling away like mad. I Don t see any evidence that disputes the act that games of Chance Are deliberately aimed at the less Well off the less Well informed. When the government gets involved in them i m not convinced that they Aren t promoting an addiction that can be detrimental to the individual to the family to some of the things we care a whole lot about in this country. Q. Do you think legislation Lor a National lottery has any Chance a. If we come on economic hard times in the next year or so i m quite confident they will be attributed to the deficit. And at that Point the proponents of the National lottery will March through the Nance committee and ways and Means committee with their polls showing that 62 percent of the people in the country like lotteries and Only 27 percent object. I would t be surprised but whet we could end up with a National lottery which i think would be the wrong thing in terms of where the country ought to be raising us Revenue and from whom it ought to be raising it. Fairness and equity would go out the window. The lottery has Public willingness going for it. But it also has ignorance. The stars and stripes Page 15