Is Oklahoma's deepening budget shortfall forcing Republican state lawmakers to abandon their core goal of tax relief?

That's what one Republican member of the Oklahoma House suggests in a confidential memorandum to GOP House members that seeks support for a plan to freeze property taxes for seniors and reduce annual property tax increases for other homeowners.

According to the memo, Rep. Dave Dank, R-Oklahoma City, takes issue with Republican colleagues who opposed the plan at a GOP caucus retreat in Claremore last month.

The memo, obtained by The Associated Press, says a majority of the House's majority caucus voted against placing the plan on a list of GOP legislative goals for 2010. It also criticizes Republican House Speaker Chris Benge for referring to the property tax proposals as "tax cuts" during discussion of the plan at the caucus meeting.

"Calling them tax cuts is like referring to (Democratic President) Barack Obama as a great leader. It simply misstates the truth," writes Dank, who refers to the property tax plan as "tax restraints."

"Restraint is what we are all about _ the restrained and reasonable growth of government revenues, in keeping with our core Republican principles," Dank says. "The taxpayers sent us here to make the changes necessary to get our state out of the sinkhole created by all those years of Democrat rule.

"Simply put, the taxpayers of Oklahoma are the one special interest we should be serving...not county officials or teachers' unions."

Benge, former chairman of the House Appropriations and Budget Committee who has supported tax cut proposals in the past, told The Associated Press Friday that rejection of Dank's property tax plan does not mean Republicans are abandoning tax relief for Oklahomans.

But, Benge said, it does mean Republicans, who have controlled the House since 2004 and took control of the Senate for the first time last year, understand the depth of Oklahoma's revenue decline.

"I think that this year is a difficult year to really do anything significant," said Benge, of Tulsa. "We want to pursue tax relief but we're not going to do so in a haphazard way."

In recent weeks, state agencies have announced layoffs and furloughs of workers and reduction or elimination of services to taxpayers to cope with budget cuts ordered by state officials.

State financial officials have said a budget shortfall, largely due to low natural gas and oil prices and a downturn in the economy, may total $1 billion _ about 14 percent of the state's $7 billion budget _ by the fiscal year end of June 30.