Deficit Cut Plan Called Doomed; Bush Blamed : Budget: Congressional Democrats are shelving Rostenkowski’s proposal because of a lack of presidential support. Only a crisis might revive it.

The Rostenkowski plan to eliminate the budget deficit, launched with great fanfare just over a week ago, appears doomed on Capitol Hill because President Bush failed to give it any support, Democratic congressional leaders charged Tuesday.

The proposal advanced by Rep. Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.) for defense spending cuts and user tax increases has been shelved indefinitely by the Democratic chairmen of the Senate and House budget committees as they begin to draft their spending plans for the year starting Oct. 1.

Only a financial crisis or the imminent threat of huge automatic spending cuts under the Gramm-Rudman law could revive Rostenkowski’s proposal for a $500-billion budget cut to abolish the deficit over three years, Democratic aides said.

On returning from a weeklong recess, Senate Democratic leader George J. Mitchell of Maine blamed the President for the demise of the proposal advanced by the veteran chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.

“The President is the cause of the budget deadlock, so only the President can break the budget deadlock,” Mitchell told reporters. “They (the Bush Administration) have opposed every single specific provision in the Rostenkowski plan while creating the impression (that) it’s not a bad idea.”

Mitchell said this is like a man at a breakfast table who refuses to eat ham, eggs and coffee and then tells his host: “Apart from that, thanks for the breakfast.”

At a press conference a week ago, Bush had praised the tone of Rostenkowski’s plan and the “evident goodwill on his part and determination to try to break the ice and move the process forward.” But he said he still opposes raising taxes.

Congressional Democrats said at the time that they feared the President might be leading them into initiating legislation to raise taxes so that he could veto the proposal and claim credit for blocking a tax hike.

House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) said then that, if Bush did not endorse the plan in advance, “proposals like . . . Rostenkowski’s cannot be enacted.”

On Tuesday, Sen. Jim Sasser (D-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said in an interview that the highly publicized plan did not even provide an opening for the start of negotiations between Congress and the White House on deficit reduction.

“I don’t see any part of the Rostenkowski proposal that has any staying power,” Sasser said. “I think it will evaporate over time.”

Rep. Leon E. Panetta (D-Carmel Valley), chairman of the House Budget Committee, praised Rostenkowski for trying to be the “conscience” of Congress by recommending unpopular solutions to a pressing problem.

So long as the President provided nothing stronger than kind words, Panetta said, the plan could not survive.

Rep. Vic Fazio (D-Sacramento), vice chairman of the Democratic Caucus, said that the President should have been more supportive if he wanted the Rostenkowski proposal to have a chance.

“After Danny went out on a limb, the White House cut off all his limbs,” Fazio said. “If you’re going to cut a deal that gores all the oxes, you need to move quickly . . . and with the bully pulpit of the Presidency.”

Rostenkowski, appearing before a group of business executives, asked them to support his plan but glumly alluded to Bush’s 1988 campaign vow of “no new taxes” when he said: “Politicians who took a pledge to resist all tax increases lack the courage to confront this question . . . . I wish I could influence my friend at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.”

He noted the enthusiastic response to the announcement of his proposal on March 12 but conceded that delay could be fatal, saying: “If you don’t act as quickly as you can, you’ll move into a fog bank.”

A Democratic source in the Senate said that any politically feasible deficit-cutting plan would have to include Republican concessions on tax increases and Democratic concessions on Social Security “for both fiscal and political reasons.”