Lamnidae

This is the kind of fire-in-the-belly that Montanans were voting for when they sent Sen. Tester to Washington. Sen. Tester lambasted Homeland Security’s Real ID price tag in a hearing of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs oversight subcommittee yesterday, calling the measure, “The worst kind of Washington, D.C., boondoggle.”

The $10 billion cost of implementing the program–and subsequent $4 billion dollar mandate the state are left to pick up–wasn’t the only complaint Sen. Tester had with Real ID, calling the entire process a distraction from more important security issues at hand.

The real mind boggle here is that Stewart Baker, assistant secretary at Homeland Security noted in the hearing that 18 of 19 9/11 hijackers had government issue IDs. How does this possibly serve as an argument for the Real ID program? I don’t see how a national ID program that loads expensive cards with un-encrypted, personal information that must have identity thieves salivating makes us any safer from domestic cells who can go legally obtain one of the new IDs just as easily. That $10 billion could be much better spent implementing several of the recommendations of the 9/11 commission that have still been ignored to date by the Bush administration.

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