States May Disobey Congress on REAL ID

According to the Associated Press, "States are threatening to challenge in court and even disobey new orders from Congress to start issuing more uniform driver's licenses and verify the citizenship or legal status of people getting them."

The story includes this quote:

"Governors are looking at all their options. If more than half of the governors agree we're not going down without a fight on this, Congress will have to consider changing this unfunded federal mandate,''
-- Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, vice chairman of the National Governors Association.

"What passed is something that will be an enormous amount of work and it's questionable what it's going to yield. "Is it going to yield national security or is it going to be hassle for people already complying with the law?''
-- Matt Dunlap, Maine's secretary of state (Democrat).

The AP writes:

"Another concern for states is preventing identity theft if licenses carry more information, said Michael Balboni, a Republican New York state senator. Balboni and Dunlap represented the National Conference of State Legislatures on a now defunct panel Congress created in December to design new driver's license rules. The conference opposes the new rules.

"What's so ironic about this bill is everybody agrees with the concept, one person, one driver's license,'' Balboni said. ``How you get there is really the tough issue.''