President Bush’s lips keep saying that there will be no new taxes, but he seems willing at least to discuss Rep. Dan Rostenkowski’s plan to reduce the national deficit. Bush, no doubt, will find much of the proposal unpalatable, particularly the item that would raise the tax ceiling for the wealthiest Americans from a rate of 28 percent to 33 percent.

Would Bush betray his class and approve such a plan? Probably not, but Rostenkowski’s proposal puts the deficit before the public again, which, in itself, is useful. Reviews of the proposal already have come from think tanks, the media, Congress and a loose collection of Beltway bashers and boosters.

Some economic experts are enthused by the proposal because of its “cold turkey” approach to savings and its claim that it offers “no smoke and mirrors; no `feel good’ promises or slide-by budgeting.”

Some disagree with the plan’s premise. Jim Miller, a fellow at the Center for Study of Public Choice at George Mason University, wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal that Rostenkowski has a skewed sense of how to measure taxes and spending. Miller asserts that the plan eventually would grab an inordinate share from taxpayers.

Through a series of budget cuts, a one-year freeze on Social Security increases and a tax raise, his proposal, Rostenkowski’s says, would reduce the deficit by 55 billion next year and lead to a surplus by 1995. Rostenkowski, head of the House Ways and Means Committee, reportedly discussed the proposal with Bush’s Chief of Staff John Sununu and Budget Director Richard Darman, and Democratic leaders. No one, he reported, had a strong disagreement with his attempt to sell the budget proposal to the public.

Persuading the public to listen to his budget proposals may prove more difficult than persuading Bush to raise taxes. The dreary budget, in which billion-dollar ideas get pushed around like chess pieces on a game board, is pockmarked with growth predictions, revenue enhancers and a labyrinthine logic that make it unreadable for all but the most zealous number-crunchers among us.

The 1991 proposed budget is 1,600 pages long and accounts for $1.23 trillion; Dostoevski couldn’t have contrived such a tangled skein of reading.

Though politicians with a sense of recent history dislike discussing the possibility of cutting up America’s credit cards, Rostenkowski provides an important forum that keeps the omnivorous deficit in public view.