Seems like we should stop treating SSN user id like a password
A National ID, that is designed to more strongly prove ID and also designed to be used as a secure form of Authentication for Authorization services... THAT is what I'd really love politicians to approve.
I'm currently in the process of upgrading my enhanced ID drivers license to a Passport (done) and then applying for Global Entry, because it's only 15 more dollars than the TSA Precheck and includes it... so why not do that? That's my response to a lack of a national ID.
That means both the first issue and subsequent issues need to always be free of cost. If I need to visit some office to get it, such office must be at least as ubiquitous as a United States Postal Service office, and ideally more open hours, not less. I don't think there is either the will or the budget to do this.
This will be a very expensive continuous undertaking, not a one time expensive. My personal opinion is this money should go toward medicare for all. I strongly dislike means testing (medicaid?) or age testing (medicare). I'm sure people can find better use for the money it will take to fund a national ID.
"Very expensive"? Sure, if you allow private subcontractors to charge $2500 for printing and laminating a 60x92 mm piece of plastic, it will be very expensive, no doubt about that. But it does not have to be that way, as the experience of many other countries with mandatory government-issued IDs shows.
But either way it doesn't really address the core of what I said, in that the system currently mandated by the government has strongly benefited the surveillance industry. For example SSNs were never supposed to be used for anything besides Social Security, but a law prohibiting such abuse was never passed.
just another happy accident.
I can share that here in Denmark we have a system exactly like that, and have for more than a decade. It's called "NemID" (lit: EasyID), soon to be changed to "MitId" (lit: MyID). While there definitely are some problems with the current implementation, having a 2-factor auth solution in front of every government, banking, insurance, etc. web service is very helpful. [0]
Keep in mind that my only interaction with individuals from the government, on the phone or otherwise, is when picking up books at the library and renewing my passport. Everything from filing my taxes through registering a child for school to reporting a move is done with a NemID login and a simple, guided form. [1]
My taxes are pre-filled with the information they've already gathered from my employer and the bank through which I handle my stock portfolio. The only thing I manually have to put in is my union fees and how many times I drove to the office -- both giving me a sizable deduction.
Doing my taxes at the end of the year is simply a formality too. At the start of the year I do an advance statement with what I expect to earn, and my monthly taxes are automatically pulled based on that. The end-of-year tax calculation is to ensure I didn't pay too much or too little -- the difference being due either way in April.
All of this to say -- a sane, digitized interaction with public institutions is not only a possibility but a fact in certain countries.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NemID -- the entry is critical but not unfair. The MitID changes mitigate many of the big points.
[1]: https://lifeindenmark.borger.dk/ -- It's both a "guide to Denmark" but also has the aforementioned forms. Try going through the "Health insurance card" order flow. You can't accidentally order one without a login.
You can get a temporary "coordination ID" that healthcare,etc can use to register your journals but Bank's doesn't always let you create accounts without personal ID numbers (and specifically no BankID's so you're locked out of all the modern digital niceties and sometimes requirements).
The EU has begun a process of creating intercommunication systems* to allow for digital logins when being in other EU countries, no idea if these systems will ever allow for non-EU identifications (that would help enormously for those countries that has gotten far along).
* eIDAS , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EIDAS
Those uses were mostly fairly specific to citizen needs but in the past couple of years municipalies started using them for child care (where temporary expats definitely often need to get in touch) and soon after as the providers started looking for commercial clients the usage exploded everywhere in society and now it's starting to become really annoying/hard to live without one.
(Except possibly for JPL because a) they're not really part of NASA and b) they filed a lawsuit. (https://hspd12jpl.org/)