There’s an impressive op-ed piece in today’s Wall Street Journal (subscriber link) that calls the GOP to task over the Real ID (the new tougher requirements imposed on states if they want their drivers licenses to be considered acceptable by the feds for identification). The punchline:
It’s unfair to say that the Republican Congress has done nothing on immigration. In one respect, according to a new report from state officials, Congress made matters worse.[...]
All this cost and inconvenience might be acceptable if the law did what its proponents claim. But like a 700-mile fence along a 2,000-mile border, Real ID amounts to one more anti-immigration measure that ignores the economic incentives that draw immigrants here in the first place.
State agencies put the total cost of standardizing drivers’ licenses at upwards of $11 billion; Congress has so far appropriated all of $40 million. Again, this is from a Republican Congress that made its first legislation upon taking power in 1995 a bill against imposing “unfunded mandates.” It included a pledge not to impose any burden on the states that wasn’t fully financed from Washington. Now comes Real ID, transforming state departments of motor vehicles back into everyone’s worst nightmare. Some accomplishment.
Gee…and I thought I was the only person who remembered the “no unfunded mandates” portion of the Contract With America.
