Last night the House Democrats blew their chance to put and end to higher taxes on the poor and middle class.

House's property tax cuts squeak by:

Texas businesses and homeowners would get $7.5 billion in property tax cuts under a bill tentatively approved Wednesday by the House, but consumers would pay more for bottled water, cigarettes, auto repairs and all other taxable purchases.

Are you a homeowner? If you are your taxes just went down. Are you a consumer? Well you taxes just went WAY up! Not everyone is a homeowner and those that aren't will not see their rent go down because of this, it just may not go up as fast as it was going to if this didn't pass. So that helps some, but not all. Everyone is a consumer it's just that taxes on consumption hurt those with less money more than it does those with more money. So how could the Democrats have stopped this you ask? If they just would have had all their members on the floor last night it would have been voted down:

After almost 10 hours of debate, the House narrowly approved the bill 73-72, with 13 Republicans joining Democrats in opposing it.

[and]

In a moment of drama, the bill originally failed 74-73 in electronic voting. But on a verification roll call, two "no" votes from Reps. Craig Eiland, D-Galveston, and Trey Martinez Fischer, D-San Antonio, were dropped when the lawmakers were found to be absent.

Both were out of town when the vote was cast. Legislators have cast votes for absent members using the electronic voting system.

This also does nothing to add more money to schools or fix the long term financing problem. This is one of those party leadership problems. Whoever is in charge of “whipping” the Democrats for votes should have made sure the members were on the floor when it came time to vote. Rep. Pena's blog, A Capitol Blog, has a running commentary of today's debate.