EDITORIAL REAL DELAY FEDS, STATES, DEMS AND GOP POINT FINGERS OVER ID PLAN.

MORE than five years have passed since the attacks on 9-11 demonstrated, in horrific detail, the need to establish proper identification for everyone living in the U.S.

But throughout that time, government at all levels and politicians of both parties have been far more interested in shifting blame than in taking responsibility.

It wasn't until last year that Congress passed the ``Real ID'' law, more by hook and by crook than through any coherent process. The legislation was slapped onto an emergency measure granting funding to tsunami victims.

And the law -- which sets stringent standards for the issuance of state driver's licenses -- has its problems. First among them is that details of the measure have been left up to the Department of Homeland Security to figure out, which, so far, it hasn't.

Then there's the price tag.

Real ID will cost states $11 billion over the next five years -- $500 million in California alone -- but Congress has offered only $40 million to help them gain compliance.

It's no surprise that, facing such a huge, mostly unfunded mandate, many states, including California, are bristling. They hope that the new Democratic congressional majority will roll back Real ID altogether, as two senators have proposed.

That would be an understandable response, but problematic in its own right.

For starters, Democrats campaigned on a promise to enact the reforms proposed by the 9-11 commission, and those reforms included the sorts of measures included in Real ID.

More important, though, is that simply rolling back Real ID would do nothing to address the problem it was intended to fix -- namely, ensuring that all identification cards are secure.

As it stands, anyone with a driver's license from any state can board a plane, rent a truck or buy a gun in this country. Yet there are few meaningful safeguards in most states to make sure that those applying for licenses are who they say they are -- a security loophole that can make life all too easy for terrorists. And there are problems with forgery and tampering.

Compounding the problem are the country's busted immigration system and the millions of people who cross our borders and operate here anonymously. In an age of terrorism, we desperately need some system for identifying everyone on American soil.

Yet efforts to extend identification to illegal immigrants in California -- in the form of driver's licenses -- have been frustrated. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says he's open to the idea, but he's waiting on the Department of Homeland Security to first issue its specifics for implementing Real ID, which may end up getting repealed, anyway.

Thus we have Washington pointing the finger at the states, and the states pointing it right back, while Democrats and Republicans complain about one another.

While everyone agrees that someone should do something, no one seems willing to do it -- and the country remains at risk.