[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 29 (Thursday, February 15, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2003-S2005]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              REAL ID CARD

  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, if the Chair would please let me know 
when I have a minute left.
  Mr. President, when we come back from the recess we are going to turn 
our attention to the 9/11 Commission recommendations which have been 
enacted by the House. I want to discuss an issue I hope will come up 
when we discuss the 9/11 Commission recommendations and that has to do 
with the so-called REAL ID card, the de facto national ID card.
  This is a law that was enacted in early 2005. It was House-passed 
legislation that would require States to turn more than 190 million 
driver's licenses into de facto national identification cards, with 
State taxpayers paying most of the costs. I am not very much of a 
prognosticator. My predictions have never been all that accurate, but 
at the time of that passage, I objected to it.
  The first thing wrong with the REAL ID law was that the House stuck 
the law into an appropriations bill that supported our troops in Iraq 
and sent it over to the Senate. None of us wanted to slow down support 
for our troops in Iraq while we debated ID cards, so it was stuck in 
there and we passed it. But the second and larger problem with what the 
House did 2 years ago, and which we agreed to and it became law, is 
that States not only got to create the ID cards, but they will likely 
end up paying the bill. I said to my colleagues, and at that time we 
had a Republican Congress: This is one more of the unfunded Federal 
mandates we Republicans promised to end.
  Well, now we have moved ahead about 2 years, and I believe I have

[[Page S2004]]

turned out to be right about that. Just last month, the Maine 
Legislature became the first State to approve a resolution urging 
Congress to overturn the Real ID Act before it takes effect on the 
States in May of 2008. Only 4 of the 186 Maine lawmakers voted no. In 
the following other States there are bills, according to USA Today, 
that are considering asking us to overturn the law: Hawaii, Georgia, 
Massachusetts, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Vermont, and Washington.
  One reason they are asking us to overturn it is that according to the 
National Governors Association, implementing the law will cost more 
than $11 billion over 5 years. We have provided $40 million of the $11 
billion. That is an enormous unfunded Federal mandate.
  The Presiding Officer is a former State official. I don't know if he 
had these same feelings when he was in his State of Colorado, but 
nothing used to make me madder when I was Governor of Tennessee than 
for some group of Congressmen to come up with a big idea, turn it into 
law, hold a big press conference, take credit for it, and send the bill 
to the States to pay for it. Then that same Congressman would usually 
be back home making a Lincoln Day speech, bragging about local control.
  I am afraid that is what we have with REAL ID. It sounds pretty good 
maybe to say: Oh, we have a war against terrorism, and we have illegal 
immigration and other immigration issues. We need some sort of 
identification card that will make it possible to do a better job of 
fighting terrorists and impose the rule of law on our border. That 
sounds good, but there is a right way to do it and a wrong way to do 
it.

  Here is what we should have done and what I hope we will do. I hope 
the week after next, when Senator Collins of Maine comes to the Senate, 
which I hope she will, and offers an amendment that will, in effect, 
set up a thoughtful process for, first, delaying the implementation of 
this bill and, second, give us a chance to consider all of its 
ramifications, I hope we will adopt that as part of the 9/11 Commission 
Report. In other words, give the idea of a national identification card 
the kind of thoughtful attention it deserves in the Senate.
  No. 1, we should do it because it is a huge break with our tradition 
of liberty in this country. We do not have to look very far around the 
world--South Africa is the first place to look--to see the abuse a 
national identification card can cause. In South Africa, it was used to 
classify people according to race. Everybody had to have one. Everybody 
had to carry it around.
  In this age of technology in a country that values liberty above 
everything else, there are a lot of questions about whether we should 
have a national ID card. Those ought to be explored in the Senate. We 
ought not push one through in a bill no one wants to vote against 
because it is primarily about supporting troops.
  When I was Governor of Tennessee, I twice vetoed the photo driver's 
license which we all now carry around in our pockets. I did that, 
first, because I thought it was an infringement upon civil liberties; 
and, second, I did it because I thought what would happen was we would 
have lines around the block of people waiting to get their photo ID 
card--and that still happens sometimes--but I was gradually overruled 
by the State legislature and we got an ID card.
  What helped getting overruled was when I showed up at the White House 
once to see the President at the National Governor's Conference and 
they asked to see my photo ID. I said: I don't have one. They asked: 
Why not? I said: Because I vetoed it. And I had to be vouched for by 
the Governor of Georgia. The push for this was law enforcement saying 
it would help with check cashing and other identification.

       While as a liberty-loving country, we say we do not want a 
     national ID card, at the same time, we have allowed a de 
     facto national ID card. That is a State driver's license. We 
     have over 190 million of these. We all know the de facto 
     driver's license ID cards are very ineffective. They are 
     easily duplicated, they are often stolen, and we go around 
     not just using them to prove we can drive, but we use them to 
     get on airplanes, we use them to cash checks, and we use them 
     to get a passport. They are not an effective ID card.

  I have reluctantly come to my conclusion. Despite the fact I vetoed 
those early ID cards, on September 11, one way our world has changed is 
we do need a national ID card. Maybe our discussion in committees would 
show we do not want one but that we want authorized two or three forms 
of identification cards which meet certain standards which can be used 
for different ways.
  For example, there could be a travel card that one could use to get 
on an airplane. If you had that travel card that allowed you to get on 
the airplane, you might use it for other purposes, as we have come to 
use the driver's licenses in that way or we might use the passport. 
About a quarter of Americans have passports, 68 million Americans. That 
is one form of an ID card though not as common as 196 million driver's 
licenses. There is also the Social Security card. My initial instinct 
is that a Social Security card that had the proper technology attached 
to it would be the wisest, the most effective, and most useful ID card 
because most of the immigration problems we have are related to work, 
either as a student or as a worker. It would be natural to have an ID 
card, to have a Social Security card such as the card we carry around 
in our pockets that also serves as a de facto national ID card.
  There was a case of the Swift Company, which was using, under our 
antiquated immigration laws, the basic pilot program, which is what we 
say to businesses to use if we want them to do everything they can to 
make sure they are only hiring people legally in the United States. 
Swift and other companies do that. Even if they do that, they cannot be 
assured that the people they are hiring are legally here because many 
of the Social Security numbers have been stolen, as it turns out, and 
it is against our laws to inquire too far into someone who applies for 
a job and presents evidence they are a citizen. Our laws say you cannot 
ask more questions to second-guess that.
  We have some work to do. All of us who think about the immigration 
issue--which is what brought all this up, along with the September 11 
disaster--we think of the immigration issue and we think of the need 
for employer verification. For employers in this country to verify that 
people they hire are legally here, we are going to have to supply those 
employers, in some way, with the ability to ask for a good 
identification card. Perhaps it is the Social Security card, perhaps it 
is a travel card, perhaps it is a passport, perhaps it is a bank card, 
maybe there are two or three of those. That might be a way to avoid 
having a single card and could diminish the concern about civil 
liberties. Or maybe the needed ID is the driver's license, but I doubt 
it is the driver's license.
  Certainly, we should not expect the men and women in the Tennessee 
Department of Public Safety who are in charge of issuing a few million 
driver's licenses, to be turned into CIA agents whose job it is to 
catch terrorists. I don't think they are expected to do that. They are 
not prepared to do that.

  What we will be requiring is the citizens of the various States to 
show up to get their driver's license or a renewal with different forms 
of identification, some of which they may not have. It will be a very 
expensive process and a big mess. My first impression is that the State 
driver's license system is not the best place to look if we want to 
create an identification card.
  Here is my suggestion. My suggestion is we pay close attention to the 
Senator from Maine, Susan Collins, when we come back after the recess. 
She has a thoughtful recommendation to the Senate which suggests, over 
the next couple of years, we have time to look at this issue of whether 
we need a national identification card and what kind of identification 
card we might need. I hope the hearings would be held this year in the 
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the Judiciary 
Committee or whatever the appropriate committees might be, and then we 
might deal with this issue in the immigration bill which I hope we pass 
this year.
  We need a comprehensive immigration bill. That bill needs to have an 
employer verification system. I don't see how we can have an employer 
verification system without a good form of identification card. I hope 
we will deal with this in the way the Senate normally deals with 
issues; that is, through its committees, considering all

[[Page S2005]]

of the options. In the meantime, we have the Real ID law in place with 
the estimate that it may cost up to $11 billion, a huge unfunded 
mandate. We have States saying we are going to opt out of that program. 
If they do, that means the citizens of Maine or Montana or some other 
State will not be allowed to fly on airplanes, for example, because 
they will not be from a State that has an approved ID card. That will 
create a lot more confusion and a lot more angry constituents.
  I am here today to wave a yellow flag, to remind Members of the Real 
ID issue. It may not be part of the 9/11 Commission recommendation when 
they come to the floor, but it is relevant and certainly germane. I 
hope the Senator from Maine will provoke a discussion of it, and we 
will move to delay its implementation until we can think this through 
and do it right.
  I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record an article I 
wrote for the Washington Post on Wednesday, March 30, 2005, about the 
Real ID and my views.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Washington Post, Mar. 30, 2005]

                Much as I Hate It, We Need a National ID

                          (By Lamar Alexander)

       The House recently passed legislation requiring states to 
     turn 190 million driver's licenses into national ID cards, 
     with state taxpayers paying most of the cost.
       The first thing wrong here is that the House stuck the ID 
     card proposal on the appropriations bill that supports troops 
     in Iraq and sent it over to the Senate. We should not slow 
     down money for our troops while we debate ID cards.
       The second problem is that states not only get to create 
     these ID cards, they'll likely end up paying the bill. This 
     is one more of the unfunded federal mandates that we 
     Republicans promised to stop.
       Supporters argue that this is no mandate because states 
     have a choice. True, states may refuse to conform to the 
     proposed federal standards and issue licenses to whomever 
     they choose, including illegal immigrants--but if they do, 
     that state's licenses will not be accepted for ``federal 
     purposes,'' such as boarding an airplane. Some choice. What 
     governor will deny his or her citizens the identification 
     they need to travel by air and cash Social Security checks, 
     or for ``other federal purposes?''
       Of course, the ID card may still backfire on Congress. Some 
     feisty governor may say, ``Who are these people in Washington 
     telling us what to do with our drivers' licenses and making 
     us pay for them, too? California will use its licenses for 
     certifying drivers, and Congress can create its own ID card 
     for people who want to fly and do other federally regulated 
     things--and if they do not, I will put on the Internet the 
     home telephone numbers of all the congressmen.''
       If just one state refused to do the federal government's ID 
     work, Congress would be forced to create what it claims to 
     oppose--a federal ID card for citizens of that state.
       Finally, if we must have a better ID card for some federal 
     purposes, then there are better ideas than turning state 
     driver's license examiners into CIA agents. Congress might 
     create an airline traveler's card. Or there could be an 
     expanded use of U.S. passports. Since a motive here is to 
     discourage illegal immigration, probably the most logical 
     idea is to upgrade the Social Security card, which directly 
     relates to the reason most immigrants come to the United 
     States: to work.
       I have fought government ID cards as long and as hard as 
     anyone. In 1983, when I was governor of Tennessee, our 
     legislature voted to put photographs on driver's licenses. 
     Merchants and policemen wanted a state ID card to discourage 
     check fraud and teenage drinking. I vetoed this photo 
     driver's license bill twice because I believed driver's 
     licenses should be about driving and that state ID cards 
     infringed on civil liberties.
       That same year, on a visit to the White House, when a guard 
     asked for my photo ID, I said, ``We don't have them in 
     Tennessee. I vetoed them.'' The guard said, ``You can't get 
     in without one.'' The governor of Georgia, who had his photo 
     ID driver's license, vouched for me. I was admitted to the 
     White House, the legislature at home overrode my veto and I 
     gave up my fight against a state ID card.
       For years state driver's licenses have served as de facto 
     national ID cards. They have been unreliable. All but one of 
     the Sept. 11 terrorists had a valid driver's license. Even 
     today, when I board an airplane, security officials look at 
     the front of my driver's license, which expired in 2000, and 
     rarely turn it over to verify that it has been extended until 
     2005.
       I still detest the idea of a government ID card. South 
     Africa's experience is a grim reminder of how such documents 
     can be abused. But I'm afraid this is one of the ways Sept. 
     11 has changed our lives. Instead of pretending we are not 
     creating national ID cards when we obviously are, Congress 
     should carefully create an effective federal document that 
     helps prevent terrorism--with as much respect for privacy as 
     possible.

                          ____________________