It’s a muggy Tuesday in DC and I am sitting in the cafeteria that connects three House office buildings- Rayburn, Longworth, and Cannon. I just met with the sponsor of our bill, Rep. Sean Casten, to celebrate the reintroduction of our bill! Today we are reintroducing HR 8821, the IDs for an Inclusive Democracy Act.
HR 8821 will establish a free and optional Federal ID for all. It is the solution to all of the problems we talk about every day. With this bill, we’ll make sure that all 26 million American adults who do not have ID will be able to get one, for free, and forever. And not just the adults! Anyone over 14 will be able to get a free ID. With the swipe of a pen, tens of millions of people will be able to get the jobs, housing, and services that they can’t get now. This bill will change lives, and change the country.
It’s thrilling, but it’s also pretty hard. Getting a bill turned into a law is a lot more difficult than School of Rock made it seem. We have to make it through at least one committee- a challenge in itself, get at least 218 members of the House and 51 members of the Senate to vote to pass the bill- which means getting it on the floor in each chamber, another hurdle, then, when the same bill is passed by both chambers (which probably means going to Conference Committee and then voting again) the President can finally sign it.
It’s a lot, but I know it’s possible. One of the few things that both sides of the aisle can agree on is that everyone in this country should be able to legally obtain employment and housing. When more people than the population of every state except California and Texas don’t have the means to provide for themselves and their families because they lack something as simple as an ID, everyone can get behind making it happen.
But, making it happen requires every day citizens who are willing to do the work to get it there, and I often think that this bill would have a better chance with an extrovert at the helm. I am a person who avoids talking to strangers at all costs. I love Zoom. I had a great time in quarantine. And now I’m in Congress and I have to pitch total strangers. It’s scary, but it’s worth it. Because I know we can do this. We can get 26 million people an ID. We can change 26 million lives. We can change the country. We can do big things.
So I’m off to do some scary meetings and do my best to advocate for every client I have ever had who just needed an ID to change their lives. Thank you for reading this, and if you’d like to help, please consider making a donation. Getting this bill passed, and our bills in California, and the bills we are introducing in other states, and all of the work we are doing to increase ID access at every level, will require time, a team, research, partners, and many more days in front of many more legislators. Every donation gets us a little closer to our goal.
Thank you. Let’s do big things.
Kat