Why did Congress take so long to look at identity theft

Anyone fool can see why Congress would start looking at legislation about identify theft and the use, misuse and theft of information from information companies such as Choicepoint. To me the bigger question is why are they waiting until now, after several high profile cases of information theft, to act on it. Its not like identity theft just started this year, I just heard something earlier today that said there would be almost 10 million cases of identity theft this year alone. It can't be prevented altogether, but something needs to be done. These infromation thefts are getting to be a regular thing. It would behoove the companies in this industry to act awfully quickly to get their act together before Congress tries to do it for them (and they don't always do a good job in the process).

Here is the story:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=716&e=8&u=/ap/20050415/ap_on_bi_ge/identity_theft