Political Quotes

“obviously, we will listen to those concerns. I need to go back and mention one thing I mentioned when I introduced it earlier. There is a long list of things for which the law permits us to use Social Security numbers precisely because the Federal Government does need to verify identity. If you apply for food stamps, if you apply for Medicaid, if you apply for a green card, a passport, a lot of things that the Federal Government and in some cases State governments do, we really need to be sure that the person who is applying for the benefit or applying for the activity involved is in fact who he says he is. We don't have a national ID card, and the card that has more closely approximated a government identifier than anything else of uniform use is the Social Security card. That is why the Federal Government does in fact require it. Obviously, our right to vote is one of our most sacred. We don't want that diluted by people who should not be voting. We want to ensure that people who are voting are in fact who they say they are. This is one of the better ways of doing it, through the Social Security card. It can be stolen. There are fraudulent Social Security cards in circulation, to be sure. It is not a perfect identifier. The Social Security Administration is concerned that the more uses there are to which the Social Security card is put, the more incentive there is to steal cards or make invalid cards.”