Politics: USA states: Resistance emerges in state legislatures to new Fed law on ID via driver's licenses

Christian Science Monitor's Ben Arnoldy reports that "Resistance rises to US law that requires stricter ID standards" (Feb9,2k7). He says,
Legislators in 15 states are pushing bills and resolutions that urge noncompliance with the 2005 Real ID Act. Politicarp says, it's all in the extreme underfunding and pushing huge costs onto the states so that their state budgets would be subject to ruin by the Federales.

States from Maine to Montana are rebelling against a federal law meant to make driver's licenses a definitive form of identification, an issue that cuts across flash points of homeland security, civil liberties, and illegal immigration.

Legislators in 15 states are pushing bills and resolutions that urge noncompliance with the 2005 Real ID Act. The law, based on recommendations by the 9/11 commission, sets minimum standards for verifying the identity of license applicants, and stipulates what information must be stored on machine-readable cards.

North America > USA

The law is intended to make it harder for terrorists to operate on American soil and for illegal immigrants to get legitimate employment in the US.

But as the 2008 deadline for implementation nears, the Real ID law is raising a host of concerns: cost, hassle for millions of drivers, and fear that government or private industry will misuse the data network. Opponents as divergent as states' rights politicians, civil libertarians, and immigration advocates are rallying to undo it.

Especially states that would be least-likely-targets of the new call by Al-Quaeda for the destruction of American oil supplies, can't see an interest of such huge expense being downloaded onto them. Many states have been struggling for years to achieve balanced budgets, since the Fed govt still sops the lion's share of the public's available tax-dollars (even with Fed income-tax cuts, etc). A draconian download forcing the several states into Homeland Security expenditures around driver's licenses being turned into a major ID certification is not palateable and raises Federalism issues. Of course, one alternative is a National ID card system. But that would be even harder to institute as it would arouse accusations of "police state" etc from many activist organizations of both the Left and R+t.