Revamping Your Driver's License

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Illegal aliens would be hardest hit, by far. Besides the requirement to prove legal status in order to qualify for a driver's license, the bill would raise new barriers for asylum seekers and strip away judicial review of many federal deportation orders against immigrants. All of which helps explain how such controversial ID standards could pass into law. Many Republicans who would normally oppose anything that smacks of a national ID have rolled over in exchange for the immigration controls.

Other critics, including civil libertarian Alan Dershowitz, came around to driver's-license reforms after 9/11. Most of the hijackers had driver's licenses or state IDs, leading the 9/11 commission to recommend changes like the ones proposed. Had this bill been enacted by 2001, some of the terrorists would probably have had invalid licenses because their visas had expired.

Finally, a clever political trick vanquished any remaining opponents. Republicans wrapped the ID changes into a bill that provides $82 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is the same kind of bill that Senator John Kerry voted for and then against in 2003, to his eternal regret. "There may be some things you don't like [in the bill], but you will vote for it," says Republican Representative Tom Davis of Virginia, one of the architects of the changes, explaining why he thinks it will pass. President George W. Bush has vowed to sign the measure, partly to elicit cooperation from congressional Republicans later this year on his immigration proposal, which would create a guest-worker program.

But the proposed mandates represent another blow to states' rights that may ultimately stir up the federalist wing of the G.O.P., which is unhappy with the massive new education and homeland-security burdens imposed by Washington on the rest of the country. The suggested ID changes are particularly bold, since the 9/11 reform bill passed in December asked state officials to come together on their own to craft national standards for driver's licenses. A 16-person commission had been merrily doing that until it got a letter last week from the feds suspending its operation. "There are legitimate concerns about undermining local authority," says Republican Senator John Sununu of New Hampshire.

So far, Congress hasn't offered any money to pay for the measure, even though the Congressional Budget Office estimates that it would cost more than $100 million over five years (mostly to create the databases). In a March Op-Ed piece opposing the bill, Republican Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee called it "one more of the unfunded federal mandates that we Republicans promised to stop."

National security is a federal responsibility, as Jeff Lungren, a spokesman for bill sponsor Republican Representative James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, points out. For that very reason, though, a national ID might have been cleaner. There would be no need to rely on DMV workers, a few of whom have been known to sell driver's licenses for the right price. "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," Alexander wrote.