Generally, if you saw conservatives proposing policies that made ID available to everyone for no cost (like a free copy of their birth certificate and free passport card for every citizen), their opposition would look silly on this.

Instead, conservatives focus on the ID mandate, ahead of fixing the inherent supply issues. Indeed, while I still have objections after this issue is fixed, they're largely irrelevant to the political mainstream.

Generally I'm opposed to anything that smacks of 'papers place', and the government has a higher bar to need to confirm and record identity than John Q. Public (also I'd note, the examples you cited, generally do not record anything, they just verify age of purchaser).

It all boils down to some form of absurd partisanship.

> Generally, if you saw conservatives proposing policies that made ID available to everyone for no cost (like a free copy of their birth certificate and free passport card for every citizen), their opposition would look silly on this.

Or imagine if you saw Democrats proposing this?

Any group raising their money from small dollar donations has an incentive to do nothing. As soon as they accomplish something, their funding dries up.

Both are raising their money from large dollar donations. They also both accomplish plenty - bipartisan votes pass things in wealthy donors' interests.

The things that they do nothing on are "wedge" issues. The filibuster guarantees that those are the only things that can't get passed if Congress stays vaguely equally divided. Passing material improvements to average lives is no benefit to either side.