This is not pearl-clutching.

The point is that there are hundreds of millions of consumer bank accounts in the US, and it's not clear that Treasury appreciates the turmoil they are proposing. The country has not had a debate over this, it sounds like it might just drop out of the sky one day and create unnecessary chaos.

We can use the rollout of Real ID itself as a gauge. Executives of both parties, and several Congresses, landed on 20 years as an appropriate rollout time to do so smoothly. And that's basically only needed for air travel, which most Americans do not do in a given year.

It's not crazy to ask that a more disruptive change be subject to more scrutiny and deliberation about its rollout.

In your case, everything was straightforward, you already have a license, and your bank is local so you can walk in and show your ID, awesome for you. But over hundreds of millions of people, every edge case will present. (Is it okay for banks to freeze assets of people in hospitals who are unable to perform the necessary steps and present themselves at a bank? Inmates? How are joint accounts handled? What counts as bank account? What happens to money currently held legally here by foreign nationals?)

The one that might affect the most people here: if you have to show ID, presumably the bank has to be able to authenticate it against your person. Which means an in-person visit. This would be bad if you are one of the tens of millions of Americans whose primary bank does not have any branches in their state of residence. I bank at my alma mater's credit union, even though I have not lived in that state for decades. Would I need to travel there to show my ID or have my account frozen?

Again, a bipartisan set of Congresses and Presidents landed on 20 years to rollout when the only real penalty would be some people would not be able to board a plane when they wanted to, without extra scrutiny.

A botched rollout of this could lead to unpredictable financial calamities as rents and other bills go unpaid, etc.

There is simply not an emergency here, we don't have to upend our financial system pretending there is. The ulterior motive here is to preserve the stability of our financial system while making changes.