I really like Sandusky Register reporter Tom Jackson’s piece responding to my post yesterday about congressional appropriators and our national ID law, the REAL ID Act. Jackson is paying attention to all that is said about Ohio’s congressional delegation. Not just following the herd, he’s looking out for new and different things that might be interesting to the folks back home.
The gist of his argument is that calling Ohio Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur 75 percent supportive of REAL ID is unfair because she voted against it when it passed the House as a stand‐alone bill in 2005. She did vote against it that once, but she also allowed a voice vote on the rule that attached REAL ID to a later appropriations bill, and she voted for that bill and the conference report, both votes helping to make REAL ID a federal law.
Rep. Kaptur doesn’t stand out as a pro‐national‐ID legislator—true—but that is precisely how log‐rolling in Washington works. Bills that tie controversial matter like a national ID law to broadly supported priorities like military funding and money for tsunami relief allow representatives like Kaptur to vote for a national ID twice without standing out.
I didn’t do a good enough job of explaining the procedure by which REAL ID was passed, and Jackson understood me to be blaming Kaptur for funding REAL ID. In fact, my post focused on votes for passage of REAL ID itself. But Kaptur and other appropriators will be voting soon on the FY 2016 Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill, which year after year provides funds to push state implementation of REAL ID. The bill has lots of other priorities in it, but Rep. Kaptur and her colleagues on the Appropriations Committee’s Homeland Security Subcommittee are responsible for all of the bill’s content. Given that any of them could de‐fund REAL ID and the national ID project with a simple amendment, I believe it’s appropriate to hold all of them to account for not doing so.
