Douglas Alexander: “this amendment, the Alexander-Collins- Voinovich-Warner amendment, has to do with the law we call REAL ID. I will…”

“this amendment, the Alexander-Collins- Voinovich-Warner amendment, has to do with the law we call REAL ID. I will describe REAL ID in a moment, but fundamentally what the amendment proposes is to offer $300 million in funding to the States to implement REAL ID. The offset would be a 0.8-percent across-the-board cut in the rest of the bill. The total bill is $37 billion, more or less. I know that offset is not one the chairman and ranking member of the committee are likely to approve of, but during our committee discussions I offered other offsets which weren't approved of, and I feel strongly that if the Congress requires the States to adopt REAL ID or something similar to REAL ID, then the Congress ought to pay for it--hence the $300 million amendment. Someone once said about me last year--and I haven't been here very long, this is my fifth year as a Senator, but I have been around a while--they said the problem with Lamar is he hasn't gotten over being Governor, which I was privileged to be in my home State of Tennessee for several years.”