The Comment: Democratic senators pandering is a low blow

A few weeks ago, liberals and progressives like MSNBC's Rachel Maddow were in so much a tizzy over the formation of a 15-member moderate bloc of Democrats in the U.S. Senate that the Colorado Democratic Party chair Pat Waak and even Sen. Mark Udall himself, who's a member of the group, issued statements reiterating support for President Obama. Charged by Maddow of trying to "torpedo their party's own agenda" by doing the Republican's dirty work, Udall's statement rebuffed those charges, saying that this group's main purpose is to "to bridge divides and support the President's agenda, not to undermine it."

I bring this up because this past Monday, five Democratic senators in the legislature effectively killed senate bill 170, which would have granted some illegal immigrants in-state tuition, which would've given them an opportunity to go to college. Some illegal immigrants, not all, because only illegal immigrants who attended a Colorado public school for at least three years and graduated would've been eligible to receive in-state tuition. On top of that, the bill would only have become effective when or if the federal DREAM Act became law.

On the surface, the two situations seem similar: Democrats with conservative constituents would rather save their own ass than anyone else, but in reality the two situations are different:

Many Coloradans would bust out laughing at Maddow's charges that Udall was helping in "watering down the President's climate-change legislation." These accusations among others hide the fact that this group in the Senate arguably has a real and legitimate purpose in giving a voice to centrist senators who are perhaps a little less liberal than John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, or Barbara Boxer.

In contrast, voting against senate bill 170 really had no useful or beneficial purpose. In crossing party lines and joining Republicans to kill a Democratic-sponsored bill (with strings attached, no less), these Democratic senators also dashed the dreams of young Coloradans who have to continue to see a "dead end" sign at the end of their high school career. Linda Newell, D-Littleton, said that she had simply, "listened to [her] constituents." While Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, used the economy as an excuse, pointing to a potential "$300 million cut to higher education" as the reason she voted against the bill.

Using the economy as an excuse is really a deception because it presupposes two things: 1) that in-state tuition is some sort of state subsidy or "benefit"; and 2) that parents of illegal immigrants haven't been paying taxes when they were working and sending their kids to high school.

The truth is that in-state tuition is a subsidy in the same way that K-12 public schools are a subsidy. Taxpayer dollars provide the portion of the legislature's funding of higher education, so it stands to reason that if your parents pay taxes in Colorado and have been paying them for the past three years, you ought to be allowed to pay in-state tuition just like everyone else paying in-state tuition.

The whole idea that in-state tuition for some illegal immigrants would be a kind of a burden to the state's budget is ludicrous for at least two reasons: 1) the legislature doesn't have any predetermined limit of how many Coloradans can go to college; and 2) isn't this a not-so-subtle way of saying to other high schoolers "Don't go to college kids, the state is too broke!"

Already, Carroll's Facebook page is full of messages from people expressing their support for her "no" vote-even, some who say they are immigrants or minorities themselves. Regardless, this vote by these five Democrats is a low blow to progressive voters, especially Hispanic ones that voted Morgan Carroll in November. That Morgan Carroll sided with people like state Sen. Bill Cadman, R-Colorado Springs, who told The Denver Post that in-state tuition for children of illegal immigrants was akin to saying "if their parents robbed a bank, their kids could keep the money."

Unfortunately, this is probably a bigger issue than the few young Coloradans who are affected by the failure of this bill, as controversy over it was most likely a proxy fight by opportunistic Republicans against immigrants. Unlike the formation of like-minded moderate Democrats in the U.S. Senate, the five Democrats who voted against senate bill 170 really did cave in and pandered to the worst kind of fears being peddled by Republicans against immigrants.