MCHB 2006 Federal/State Partnership Meeting

The Nuts and Bolts of the Deficit Reduction Act (DRA)

October 15-18, 2006

JOY JOHNSON-WILSON: Just to clarify, we always had to self-declare that we were a citizen, so that's an existing requirement. We didn't have to document, although, if audited, we had to be able to show. And now that we're being audited we've got to have the documentation. And what we found is that it's not the birth certificates that's the huge problem, it's you have to not only show that you're a citizen; you have to verify your identity. And that has turned out to be the biggest problem that we've had, particularly with children. With adults, many people have driver's licenses. So they have two things. They have a birth certificate and a driver's license. But with kids, you don't have the photo ID, and that's turned out to be one of the bigger challenges that we've had as states. And so, I just wanted to say that. And to say that to the extent that you're working with low income women, try to help them get those birth certificates because in two or three years, with real ID, where we're all going to have to carry around an ID of some sort, the raised emblem birth certificate is going to be a requirement for everybody to have. And it's important that for those of us who might get passports, we might think of that. For people who aren't looking to do that, the birth certificate doesn't seem like it's that a critical piece of information to have.