[unlearner]

Local banks are FDIC insured. I think requiring photo ID to withdraw funds is not unreasonable. Alternatively, I can get funds with my ATM card, Visa debit card, or by writing a check (which may not require ID). From experience, I know that I do not have to show ID when I make deposits. No one forces us to use banks, but it is more secure and convenient to most people.

Regarding your second point, it is true that voter registration cards are not the same as a national ID. That is why I think we need a national standard for acceptable ID issued by local governments.

Personally, I do not object to a national database of users of such an ID. But I realize some do object. I do not think such a database is essential to accomplishing the purpose of reducing voter fraud.

Do you think that federal government has no interest in insuring that people who vote do so legitimately?

[Wallace T.]

Unlike most businesses, a specific charter from the state or Federal government is required before a corporation or other entity may engage in the business of banking. The Federal government became involved in chartering banks in 1862 when the Lincoln Administration, in part as a wartime measure, established a national banking charter in order to promote more stable national bank notes replacing the state bank notes that fluctuated in value.

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution grants Congress the authority to "To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin." The chartering of national banks as a means of currency regulation might be interpreted as an exercise of this authority. However, in 1913, the Federal Reserve System was established and given the power to regulate the supply of money and credit, supplanting the old National bank system. Despite the elimination of the original justification for national banks, they remained in existence and new national banks have been chartered to this very day.

As for Federal deposit insurance, such as offered by the FDIC and the NCUA, there is no Constitutional justification for these agencies. Article I, Section 8 refers to the minting and valuation of coin. It says nothing about deposit insurance. Both the Comptroller of the Currency and the various State bank regulators require the obtainment of Federal deposit insurance, making its use and resultant supervision by the FDIC mandatory. There is simply no Constitutional warrant for the numerous business and consumer regulations imposed by the FDIC and other Federal banking authorities. The requirement for mandatory IDs to engage in banking transactions is yet another regulation unsupported by the Constitution.

As for the concept of a national ID, again there is no Constitutional justification therefor. The "interstate commerce" clause of the Constitution, also in Section I, Article 8, had as its original intent the prohibition of tariffs or other trade barriers to be imposed by the states. It was never meant to be a means by which the Feds can intrude on a myriad of areas, such as banking, medicine, food production, management/labor relations, etc.

Somehow this nation fought two world wars and major conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, and Kuwait without resorting to national ID cards or interfering with freedom of travel. (Of course, young men of military age were routinely questioned if not in uniform, but the rest of the population was not subject to the sort of restrictions that have already been or are proposed to be imposed.}

America is supposed to be a nation of laws, not men. We should respect the Constitution as the Framers intended under the doctrine of original intent and abandon the "living document" farce that has led to a massive expansion of governmental authority starting in earnest with the New Deal.