Revamping Your Driver's License

By Amanda Ripley

Let's dispense with the mythology right up front. A driver's license has never been just about driving. When the first ones were issued in the early 1900s, the idea was to collect fees, not to test driving skills. More recently, revoking licenses became a way to punish people who didn't pay child support or, in Wisconsin, shovel snow off their walks. In its most coveted form, the license is proof of age--or of fraud, as the case may be. In college, for example, I was not Amanda Ripley from New Jersey; I was Amanda Jones from California. I lived on Yellowbrick Road and looked suspiciously joyful in the photo, which was taken in the dorm room of an unsavory character to whom I had paid $40.

Congress is expected this week to reinterpret the driver's license yet again. The license will never, of course, be called a national ID card, which evokes jackboots and imperial forces in the minds of many Americans. But the new law would make it function a lot like a national ID that comes in 50 varieties. To begin with, states would have to ensure that everyone who gets an official license is in the U.S. legally. Nine states do not have that requirement, and not all the others verify the authenticity of the immigration documents that they demand. The new law would also mandate certain standard details on licenses, including a digital photo (about 20 states still use regular photos glued in place). And it would require that states store all that information, along with residents' driving histories and points, in a database that every other state could access.

The bill's supporters say it would not establish a national ID card, since no one has to get a driver's license or state ID. That's correct. Such documents are useful only if you need to drive, fly, cash checks, apply for certain jobs or enter federal buildings. If you are a wealthy recluse with liquid assets, it doesn't concern you.

It's also true that a state could decline to link its database or verify immigration status, but then federal officials (like the ones at airports) would not accept its licenses as proof of identity. The bill would, however, allow states to issue illegal immigrants special driver's licenses, as Utah and Tennessee do, that allow driving but are unusable for official identification at airports or federal buildings.

For most Americans, the most obvious effect of such changes would be longer lines at the department of motor vehicles (DMV). States would have three years to comply, and all existing licenses would remain valid. But meeting the new verification requirements would entail some heavy lifting by state authorities and "would be hard for the Federal Government to handle, let alone state governments," says David Quam of the National Governors Association, which opposes the bill. For example, if a driver applied for a license in Massachusetts with a Maryland birth certificate, Massachusetts DMV officials would need to check with Maryland to make sure the document was legit. "You're no longer going to get same-day service," predicts Cheye Calvo of the National Conference of State Legislatures.

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.

Although countries from France to Singapore have accepted national IDs, the U.S. remains resistant. Never mind that daily movements and decisions are already quite traceable, thanks to Social Security numbers, credit cards, cell phones and toll-booth smart cards. Never mind that 6 out of 10 Americans have been fingerprinted for one reason or another and that 13 states have biometric requirements (like fingerprints) for getting driver's licenses. No one can force us to carry a unified ID card (yet). --Reported by Perry Bacon Jr., Brian Bennett and Viveca Novak/ Washington

With reporting by Reported by Perry Bacon Jr., Brian Bennett, Viveca Novak/ Washington