The US already has a national ID system. What the Federal government can't do is make it mandatory to have a national ID, either directly or constructively through regulation. This matter has been to the Supreme Court many times over several decades and it is a matter of settled law that only the individual States have this authority.
It would require a Constitutional amendment to transfer this authority from the States to the Federal government. Congress can't just ignore the Constitution just because it is inconvenient.
Everyone with a passport wants that. I think the issue isn't so much the government having control (all governments in all countries have such control and the sky doesn't fall in) but rather the nature of the government the citizens of the US permit.
I have a passport. I would prefer it was unrelated to anything except international travel.
> I think the issue isn't so much the government having control (all governments in all countries have such control and the sky doesn't fall in) but rather the nature of the government the citizens of the US permit.
Well, yes, of course. We aren't talking about the government of France or South Korea, we are talking about the US Federal government.
Some of this is just the nature of American culture. Acceptance/rejection of federal authority is often irrational and leads to this patchwork. For instance, replace this statement with a national gun registry and watch people flip out.
Not without an equivalent of the GDPR. Our current identification systems (DL#/SSN) are currently being flagrantly abused by the surveillance industry. This needs to be stopped before we go making identification even stronger.
