The biometrics that're coming on laptops and flash drives are very cheap, and extremely cheesy. I've worked with fingerprint biometrics on a few projects and if the hardware/software are up to par, it's pretty solid. But there's no way it could be done on a nationwide level with our budget the way it is, despite the technology itself being cheap to make.
A national ID card doesn't bother me too much... at first. The information I have to include on my tax forms is more of a privacy infringement than the ID card would be. The problem is if use of the ID card "calls home". I worry mostly about the marketing possibilities.