Alabama Politics in
Doc’s Political Parlor
& Home of Lawn Mower Repair

I kicked the tires a little bit yesterday. Let’s look at some more of the plans the Alabama Legislative Democratic Leadership Council plans to enact with legislation introduced in the first 10 days of the session.

The complete list can be found here; I won’t go over each and every one.

• Pass a constitutional amendment confirming that all life is a gift from God and should be protected; and that life begins at conception. - This may be the oddest one of them all. We now want to include religious beliefs and/or facts in the constitution as an amendment? Why not a constitutional amendment that says Jesus walked on water and another that says the sun rises in the east? What is the point? What am I missing? The Brody Bill has already passed so I can’t tell that a “life begins at conception” amendment changes much.

  BTW, the Covenant proposes three new amendments to what is already the longest constitution in the world, but doesn’t look at why our Constitution is so dysfunctional. Alabama needs a new constitution, most politicians recognize the dysfunction of our current constitution, but the politicians are not addressing that.

• Defeat any efforts to redefine marriage or provide the benefits of marriage to a same-sex union. - Didn’t the state just pass another constitutional amendment to make illegal what was already illegal in the state - gay marriage? How many ways are we going to ignore the real issues of the state to beat up on this issue? I’d rather have a discussion about prison funding, or Medicaid funding, or school dropout rates, any number of things. (And as an aside, what kind of legislation are they going to introduce in the first ten days of the session to accomplish this?)
• [Require] immigrants to register for a work permit before working in Alabama and making it a felony for employers to repeatedly hire illegal immigrants. - Immigration is a hot button issue for some folks. If Alabama wants to get serious about stopping illegal immigration, one piece of the puzzle is addressing the demand for the labor, and this tries to address this. If it is passed and enforced, a smaller labor pool will create at least some upward pressure on wages.
• [G]uarantee access to affordable, quality health care for every citizen. - Now that is a Democrat sounding like a Democrat. This will be well-received in some quarters and reviled in others. Do they want to pass themselves off as Republican Lite enough that they will soft pedal this? Or will they use it to set themselves apart from state Republicans?
• [P]rovide scholarships for medical students who will serve in underserved areas. - Our underserved areas are really underserved. At least one county in Alabama has NO hospital in it.
• Guarantee funding to keep the state’s Medicaid program viable. - Most Alabamians probably do not realize the scope of what Medicaid means to Alabama. Almost 50% of births in the state are funded by Medicaid. Some hospitals and clinics are kept afloat by Medicaid and would close without that funding. You may not need Medicaid, but a hospital may be forever gone to you if it closes for lack of Medicaid funding. For every $3 the state contributes to Medicaid, the federal government contributes about $7. Medicaid means billions of dollars to the state’s economy every year.

There you have it. A mixed bag. You can read the whole thing here.

A few pieces reflect traditional Democratic concerns, but as I noted before, some have taken them to task for sounding too much like Republicans.

Thoughts?

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