This is an issue that might unite the normally divided members of this board. From this article:
BillingsGazette.com :: Real ID showdown averted for now
"WASHINGTON - The clash between the states and the federal government over nationwide rules to make driver's licenses more secure has ended - for now. A truce, of sorts, between the 50 states and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, has kicked the issue down the road for the next president and Congress to hash out almost two years from now.
In a game of chicken over whether the federal government actually would pursue its enforcement threats, Maine last week became the last state to receive an extension to comply with the Real ID Act, the federal law aimed at keeping driver's licenses out of the hands of terrorists and illegal aliens.
Without that extension, residents of Maine and the other states that flirted with the March 31 deadline could not have used their driver's licenses to board airplanes and enter federal buildings after the rules take effect May 11.
DHS now says all states are in compliance with Real ID, but opposition to the act remains strong. Bills introduced in 11 states this year would bar participation in Real ID, including one that has made it to the desk of Republican Idaho Gov. Butch Otter, who has long opposed the law, according to his spokesman.
With the immediate crisis averted, the next showdown could come at the end of the extension, in January 2010, when there will be a new Congress, a different president and very likely another secretary of homeland security.
Democrats in the current Congress have submitted bills to repeal Real ID, but none has made it out of committee, even from the Senate Judiciary Committee, where Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is a co-sponsor of such a measure.
Tim Sparapani, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, said divisions among Democratic members of Congress over homeland security and immigration issues have prevented them from pushing the bills further. "It's a question of whether requiring proof of identity actually improves security or violates the privacy and civil liberties of law-abiding Americans," he said.
Late last year, for example, a proposal by then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York to allow illegal immigrants to get driver's licenses was roundly criticized even by many of the state's congressional Democrats. U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., was caught in political crossfire over whether she supported or opposed the governor's plan.
Both Clinton and her Democratic rival, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., have been quoted opposing Real ID.
Republican torch-bearer U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona has expressed his support for the act, while acknowledging that it is a burden on the states.
States have consistently railed against Real ID as a federal intrusion into their domain, a huge unfunded mandate and a threat to personal privacy. The measure was introduced in 2005 by U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., after the federal panel investigating the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks found that the hijackers possessed some 30 driver's licenses or other state-issued ID's among them. Real ID passed the Republican-controlled Congress in 2005 with no hearings and little opposition, attached to emergency funding for the Asian tsunami.
Under the act, states will have to verify the identity of all 245 million drivers and reissue new, more tamper-proof licenses. The law also requires motor vehicle departments to digitally store and share the information with other states.
But proposed rules, released in 2007, came with an estimated $14.6 billion cost for states, and Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Washington passed laws that year that said the states refused to comply. A dozen more states have approved resolutions calling for costs to be fully covered by Congress or the act repealed.
Final regulations, released by DHS in January 2008, gave states nearly five extra years to fulfill the law's requirements and lowered the cost to an estimated $3.9 billion. The act also allows states to delay implementing the rules until the end of 2009, but they had to ask for an extension by March 31 or their residents' driver's licenses would be refused as identification for commercial flights and for entry into federal buildings starting next month."
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I already feel like I'm getting an IRS audit when I go to my local Motor Vehicle Commission. While NJ actually has a very good system overall, the ID process is what they call a "6-point" system which assigns a different point value to each form of ID you have. Oddly, a driver's license issued by the state itself is only worth like 3 points.
At what point are we trading liberty for safety?
RealID: One step closer to "Big Brother?"
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