Republican Senator Katie Britt tried to claim that New York City requires identification to shovel show in an attempt to defend the SAVE Act Thursday.
At a press conference on Capitol Hill, the Alabama politician tried to argue that because many regular parts of daily life require people to produce identification, Republicans’ extreme voter ID bill is just par for the course.
“You can’t rent a home, you can’t go to work, you can’t shovel snow in New York City without an ID, and you can’t get into [Senator] Jon Ossoff’s campaign event. So, I’m pretty sure as we look to try to achieve the American dream, whether that’s getting insurance, whether that’s getting a car, whether that’s signing your kid up for school, you need an ID,” Britt said
Leaving aside the fact that most Americans don’t have an aspirational dream of buying an insurance policy, Britt is likely piggybacking on Republicans’ jab at a specific New York City government program to help clear the city of snow.
That program hired temporary snow shovelers in severe weather, and, thanks to federal employment laws, required two forms of identification as the job pays up to $30 an hour—a living wage Britt and her fellow Republicans are unfamiliar with. You can shovel all the snow you want in the city without an ID—you just won’t get paid by City Hall.
And all of the parts of the “American Dream” Britt mentioned, including getting insurance for some reason, aren’t rights enshrined in the Constitution. Voting is a right guaranteed to all eligible American citizens, and requiring people to produce their passports, passport cards, or their birth certificates, as the SAVE Act mandates, is costly, burdensome, and an illegal poll tax.