WASHINGTON – Is anyone sick of hearing about health care reform on a nightly basis yet?

That’s the threat the Democrats are facing with this arcane legislative process of five different committee bill drafts making their way through both chambers of Congress in the waning moments of the 2009 legislative calendar.

It’s really health care debate fatigue that could be the undoing of the lofty goals this Congress and President Barack Obama had in mind following inauguration earlier this year. But last week, a quasi-compromise was reached in the Senate Finance Committee with one lone Republican, Sen. Olympia Snowe, Maine, voting for the patchwork framework of health care reform to proceed to the Senate floor, where it will be merged with another bill from the Senate Health Committee. Then, should that make it past the threat of a filibuster for an up-or-down vote, it would still have to make it through a conference committee with the House, back to the floor for a vote in both chambers and then finally to the President’s desk. That’s a long way to go and by then, a lot of people could just want the issue to go away.

Sen. Richard Shelby maintains the Democrats are determined to get it done at all costs.

“I think the Democrats, led by the President, are determined, most of them, to force a health care bill on the American people that most Americans, according to the polls, really, don’t want and most people don’t need,” Shelby said. “Most people in America, the majority, overwhelming majority, are basically satisfied with their health care.”

But, depending on the results of a few key gubernatorial elections next month, supposedly a precursor to the 2010 congressional mid-term elections — should they go for the Republican candidates in New Jersey and Virginia — that could scare away some skittish health care fence-straddlers in the Democratic Blue Dog caucus in the House. If that happens, it could spell doom for any health care reform.

Rangel Fate Lies in the Hands of Bonner

In January, Rep. Jo Bonner was named the top Republican on the House Ethics Committee. Since then, and even before that as a member of the committee, Bonner has been somewhat constrained by what he can comment on.

Nonetheless, a high-profile member of the House, Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., a 38-year veteran of the House of Representatives and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is in tax trouble. The Harlem congressman is accused of failing to disclose more than $600,000 in previously unreported assets and tens of thousands of dollars in unreported income.

Earlier this month, the Ethics Committee voted unanimously to investigate Rangel, which means Bonner and Ethics Committee Chairwoman Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif. will likely decide his fate with a report to be released in the coming weeks. This report is rumored to be the basis on which Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi will determine Rangel’s fate.

Many insiders say Rangel is already toast because these allegations, if proven true, would contradict the whole new era of transparency, hope, change, rainbows and butterflies the Democratic-controlled White House and Congress was supposed to bring to the United States of America.

It’s difficult to gauge Bonner’s attitude on the matter as he leads the GOP’s involvement in this investigation. Bonner won’t comment, and in a town that operates on leaks, the Ethics Committee is holding up pretty well, especially in a highly charged, politicized Washington.

Is Constitutional reform a winning platform for a gubernatorial candidate?

As long as I’ve been politically aware on a state level, there has always been an outcry about the obsolete nature of the Alabama State Constitution and its nearly 800 amendments. Sure, there have been a handful of left-leaning political groups that have made it a cottage industry of pushing constitutional reform as an issue, but the movement has never really caught fire because of the overwhelming fear that special interests in Montgomery would hijack the process (AEA, anyone?).

That being said, Rep. Artur Davis, one of the two prominent Democratic candidates vying for their party’s nomination, has made it one of the planks in his gubernatorial platform.

According to Davis, the 1901 Alabama Constitution is “a barrier to progress that damages economic growth and development and favors the profits of out-of-state special interests over the needs of Alabama families.”

Lovely.

There’s no question the Alabama Constitution is pathetic in its current state, but is it really the biggest threat to the prosperity of the state has a whole? Probably not, and while a case can be made for reform, there is no chaos in the streets of Huntsville, Birmingham, Montgomery or Mobile because the state constitution is inefficient.

The entire state shouldn’t have to vote on the matters of one locality in the state, like for example if the entire state should vote on a traffic light in Rainsville, Ala. because it somehow involves an act of the Alabama legislature. And that is a fundamental flaw in the current state constitution. But can people trust those in power in Montgomery, since they have never really proven they can be trusted with more legislative authority a new constitution might grant?