A GOP task force on jobs is recommending cutting income and corporate taxes and rejecting a host of Dem proposals that have either been worked into the budget or are now moving through the Legislature.

But Sen. Randy Hopper, R-Oshkosh, and Rep. Rich Zipperer, R-Pewaukee, who headed the task force, declined to say today what cuts they would make to the state budget to work in the hundreds of millions of dollars in tax reductions called for in the document.

They stressed during a Capitol news conference this morning that the document was not an alternative to the budget but a guide for lawmakers to follow based off feedback collected from job creators in the private sector.

"We weren't asking them to draft up an entire new state budget," Zipperer said. "We were asking them their ideas for how Wisconsin could create jobs."

Republican lawmakers created the Wisconsin Jobs Now Task Force in March and held a series of roundtable discussions around the state at the same time the Dem-run Joint Finance Committee was holding public hearing on the state budget.

The group's final report includes a series of recommendations for cutting taxes, easing business regulations, improving training and education, and providing affordable health care, along with a section entitled "First Do No Harm."

That last sections urges maintaining current law on joint and several liability, auto insurance minimums and the prevailing wage, all areas that would be impacted under the budget the Finance Committee approved late last week.

Other proposals in the package include lowering the caps on non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases, eliminating the proposed increase in the capital gains tax now in the budget and freezing property taxes. Lawmakers approved new caps after the state Supreme Court threw old the old ones, while the capital gains hike is in the budget.

Hopper said the feedback also should be a warning for Dems, who control both houses of the Legislature and the governor's office.

"It will hopefully serve as a tool for them to see there are consequences for their legislation," Hopper said.

UPDATE: Carrie Lynch, a spokeswoman for Dem Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker of Weston, said the report ignored a number of facts. She said of the eight states that have gained manufacturing jobs since 1990, seven closed the Las Vegas loophole for that entire period and Texas, a state that doesn't have a corporate or income tax, has had more mass layoffs than Wisconsin.

"So the Republican answer is to call for more of the same failed policies," Lynch said. "They want to continue President Bush's plan of blindly cutting taxes for corporations and hope that it all works out. If that plan had worked well, our national economy wouldn't be struggling right now."

See the report.

Watch the news conference on WisconsinEye.
-- By JR Ross