House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who once declared a ban on online gambling “one of the stupidest things I ever saw,” will use a hearing this spring to highlight the headaches he says anti-gambling regulations have created for banks and other financial institutions.

Online gambling inside the United States has been illegal for years. In order to prevent Americans from gambling with foreign companies via the Internet, Congress approved legislation in 2006 that requires banks and credit card companies to block payments to any online gambling websites based outside the United States.

At the time of the bill’s passage, opponents of the legislation argued it would place onerous requirements on the financial institutions that oversee the flow of money — a point Frank hopes his hearing will drive home.

“The banks have a lot of other things to worry about right now,” Frank said, citing the ever-expanding mortgage crisis and a host of other financial woes that have beset the industry this year. “I don’t think poker should be one of them.”

Frank introduced legislation last year to roll back parts of the anti-gambling law. At the time, the Financial Services Committee chairman said he had no plans to advance that repeal until a sufficient number of colleagues would support it.

So far, that groundswell has failed to materialize. But last week, Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), a powerful ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), signed on as a co-sponsor to the Frank legislation. And Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), a member of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, introduced a new version of his legislation this week to legalize, regulate and tax some forms of Internet gambling.

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