The congressional push to promote national ID cards worldwide continues, and it looks like the legislative vehicle — the Girls Count Act (S 802) — will likely be sent this week to President Barack Obama to be signed into law without recorded votes in the US Senate or House of Representatives.
In November, the House of Representatives approved by a voice vote HR 3398, a previous version of the Girls Count Act. That 2014 bill would, as detailed in a Ron Paul Institute Congress Alert, define it as the policy of the US government to encourage other nations to require all citizens to have national identity cards, as well as direct the US government to work with multinational organizations and private entities on imposing registration, identification, and documentation laws on people around the world. But, then the 113th Congress ended without the Senate taking action on the bill.
In the current 114th Congress that began in January, the new version of the Girls Count Act, very similar to the one considered last Congress, is on the fast track to enactment. On May 23, S 802 passed in the Senate by unanimous consent. Today the bill is scheduled for consideration in the House of Representatives under suspension of the rules. Bills considered under suspension are deemed by House leadership to be noncontroversial and are often passed by a voice vote unless a House member on the House floor successfully demands a recorded vote. Only a recorded vote makes each representative’s vote reviewable.
The Girls Count Act being considered in the House today includes language moderated here and there from the language in the 2014 bill. Thus, the new bill avoids explicitly stating that its purpose is to require people worldwide to have national ID cards. But, promoting the imposition of national ID cards would fit squarely within the broad powers in the new bill, such as regarding “official documentation” in Section 3(1), “registration programs” in Section 4(b), and “registration and documentation of all girls and boys in developing countries” in Section 4(c).
Read here the November 2014 RPI Congress Alert regarding the Girls Count Act that passed in the House last year. Also in that Congress Alert is a video interview in which RPI Chairman and Founder Ron Paul relates the push for a national ID card to the US government’s desire for pervasive surveillance.
