American Dream

Policy Analysis Paper
Topics In American Democracy

I. Statement of Problem- An act called the Real ID signed by congress in the year 2005 aims to change driver’s licenses and state ID cards to national ID cards. The real ID will go into affect the year 2013, and all states in the US have until May 11th, 2008 to comply with it. They are allowed however to ask for an extension which allows them until the year 2010 to accept it. Real ID must meet minimum requirements such as a person’s full legal name, date of birth, gender, ID number, digital photograph, address, signature, a seal, and a machine-readable data strip containing private information. There has been a lot of controversy between most states about whether to rebel against this new law or not. And more then half the nations legislatures have passed or proposed laws that go against the plan. With most of the states rejecting or rebelling against this law it seems as if the federal government is going to have a harder time then they thought to get this Real ID program started. A proposal has been made to the president of the United States to find a way to fund this program outside of the taxpayer’s money. The people of the United States are not going to want to pay more money for something especially if they don’t necessarily agree with it.
II. Synopsis of optimal solution- It’s been recommended that a different source of funding be used for this Real ID program. To this we would be spending less money on certain things such as the war in Iraq, and funding to other countries.
III. Methodology- The data for this report was found through sources on the Internet. The websites the articles were obtained from were of government origin or from a News Station. The data contains two articles in favor of the Real ID and two articles against. The data also consisted of two articles, which were neutral on the topic. The articles of which were pro had a lot of strong information about the efforts put in to...