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Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com

Published - Thursday, May 22, 2008

Story of Huebsch and Real ID not as simple as liberals thought

By Tribune editorial board

We had a “stop the presses” moment here the other day.

The Capital Times, Madison’s liberal newspaper-turned-news-Web-site, said something nice about Mike Huebsch, the conservative West Salem Republican who serves as Assembly speaker.

That doesn’t happen very often.

At issue was the federal government’s Real ID program, by which the government will make state driver’s licenses and other identification cards acceptable for “official purposes” of homeland security.

There was money in the state budget to implement the Real ID program, and Huebsch used that money instead to help balance the budget.

That raised the ire of James Sensenbrenner, a conservative member of Congress from suburban Milwaukee, who criticized Huebsch for taking the $22 million in the budget for Real ID implementation.

Capital Times editors, who object to the Real ID program as an Orwellian intrusion on civil liberties, were quick to defend Huebsch and blast Sensenbrenner.

“Huebsch is right,” the editorial said. “And while he is being criticized by the authoritarian Sensenbrenner, he deserves praise from civil libertarians.”

Unfortunately for that argument, Huebsch didn’t take the Real ID money because he’s opposed to the program. He supports it, but was simply looking for money to balance the budget.

Huebsch’s argument is that the government isn’t ready to implement the Real ID program yet, so it makes more sense to use that money now to plug a hole in the budget. Later, when the time is right, Huebsch would have supported Real ID.

In the end, the issue was moot. Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat, restored the Real ID money to the budget.

It just goes to show that the world is not always as simple as the labels “liberal” “conservative,” “Republican” or “Democrat” would indicate.

We think Huebsch has been doing a good job managing the various factions in the budget debate. He has done so without rancor, and that’s saying something — particularly when relations between the two top Democrats — Doyle and Senate Democratic Leader Russ Decker — aren’t always so good.

So, kudos to Huebsch for his grace under fire during a difficult budget process. But let’s hold that honorary membership card for the American Civil Liberties Union. He probably doesn’t want that.