This is not surprising because it is Standard Operating Procedure for Republicans in the US.

  1. Perform illegal activities
  2. Accuse somebody else of said activity
  3. Disenfranchise and / or suppress the middle & lower classes to continue the wealth transfer to the rich.

The claim that $400b in fraud was committed against the government is probably true, but it's more likely that Republicans did it[1]. Shifting the blame to the lower classes was used to justify ID.me and get contracts from the government and transfer more wealth from the lower tax-paying classes to the rich non-tax payers.

Forcing people to sign up for government services using ID.me serves two purposes:

  1. Impede and reduce access to government services (i.e. reduce government outlay to the lower classes)
  2. Become a de facto "National ID" for the US Federal government that links your face, phone, social security number, and Facebook profile to further aid in potentially suppressive measures.

A priori rebuttals:

"The government already has that information" -- The government is not a single bloc in the US and the law says the Federal Government cannot cannot use your tax ID as a national ID. Even the Real ID Act which imposed standards on state-issued IDs was controversial because it was perceived as a back-door attempt to create a national ID. But because ID.me links all of this this information and because ID.me is considered a third party with who all of this information was shared, the US government can simply issue a subpoena to ID.me and the company will simply hand it over, thus bypassing the national ID restrictions. In fact, an internal portal could be established to automatically process subpoenas that could charge a small fee for each identity request processed.

"My SSN already effectively acts like a national ID" -- You are never supposed to share your Tax ID with anyone, but we stupidly do so to sign up for credit cards.

"The rich will have to sign up as well so they're not excluded from ID.me" -- False. The rich don't do their own taxes so they would never need to interact with the IRS. They have accountants and tax preparers who work hard to ensure they pay zero taxes. [NB: Middle and lower classes could avoid using ID.me to access the IRS by submitting paper returns; or they could use a tax preparer, but that simply transfers more wealth since you have to pay the tax preparer anywhere from $50 for HR Block to $500+ for a really good tax preparer.]

"Why are you blaming Republicans? Democrats are rich too!" -- Fair point. Republicans have perfected blame-shifting, so they are an easy target. However, the proper class is wealth, because Democrats and Republicans will clearly work together as soon as their wealth is threatened.

[1] https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/ppp-fraud-charges-ceo-...