It is not officially billed as a national ID card, but the outcome is about the same. Several states have passed laws against the Real ID because of the cost.
Stateline.org provides background on this issue that, if put into action, would affect every American. It already affects every state government that is trying to figure out how to pay for such an ID:
Governors sent a message to Congress and the next president that they are unhappy with federal standards to make driver's licenses more secure and with a batch of new Medicaid rules that could cost them $13 billion over five years.
Despite changes designed to lower the cost of the 2005 Real ID Act, governors attending an annual meeting of the
National Governors Association voted unanimously Sunday (Feb. 24) to object to and continue to call for full funding of the driver's license measure, estimated to cost $4 billion.
Congress has appropriated $90 million to help states electronically verify the identity of an estimated 245 million drivers and reissue secure licenses. The law is meant to keep driver's licenses out of the hands of terrorists and illegal aliens and was passed by Congress in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The executive committee of the
National Conference of State Legislatures also recently renewed its call for Real ID to be repealed by Congress.
In 2007, six states -- Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Washington -- took the nearly unprecedented step of passing laws refusing to comply with the federal law because of the costs, federal imposition on state practice and the potential threats to individual privacy.
While the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it cannot compel states to follow the law, non-compliant driver's licenses cannot be used as ID to board commercial airplanes or enter federal buildings after May 11, when the act takes effect.
Montana, South Carolina and Maine are currently the only three states whose residents won't be able to use their driver's licenses to board aircraft after the May deadline. Those three have failed, so far, to file for an extension giving them another 19 months -- until January 2010 -- to start verifying the identities of driver’s license applicants.
Funny how the States are suddenly concerned with costs when...
