A proposal to augment federal revenue by taxing sources other than personal income will slash the nation's massive deficit without breaking President Bush's campaign vows, Sen. Bob Packwood said here yesterday.

"Historically, we have not used taxes for deficit reduction," the Oregon Republican said. "When we have raised taxes, we have raised spending. The president would want close to an iron-clad assurance that if we raised revenues . . . a fair portion of those went to reduce the deficit."

The Office of Management and Budget estimates the 1990 federal deficit to be $123.8 billion.

Packwood, visiting the University to address several public policy graduate classes and see his son, Bill, a Penn State student, said Bush meant what he said during the 1988 presidential campaign.

"I'll call them user fees if it'll make people feel better," the ranking Republican in the Senate Finance Committee said of proposed hikes in revenues such as gasoline and airline taxes.

"I think in the president's mind, when he thinks taxes he thinks income taxes," he said. "This is a man who takes seriously his campaign promises."

Bush, vying for the presidency against Democratic Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis, called on voters to "read my lips -- no new taxes."

The promise has become a catch-phrase for the Bush administration, which inherited the Packwood-authored Tax Reform Act of 1986 under former President Reagan.

Illinois Democrat Rep. Dan Rostenkowski's alternative-revenue plan, not yet on the Senate floor, also includes one-year freezes on spending increases and cost-of-living adjustments.

"Those are genuine reductions in spending," Packwood said.

Shifting to diplomatic topics, Packwood said beleaguered Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev needs to use caution in dealing with restive regions such as the Ukraine, Latvia and most of all the breakaway republic of Lithuania.

"Clearly if Russia were to by force attempt to keep Lithuania from achieving its independence, then Congress would cut back trade ties, credit ties, and there'd be no shipments of wheat," Packwood said. "There'd be an immense economic reaction."

Soviet troops rolled into the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius Friday after leaders of the republic declared their independence from the U.S.S.R. and refused to surrender residents who had evaded Soviet conscription.

Talks between Moscow and Lithuania continued Sunday and yesterday. Tensions remained high late yesterday after the Soviet occupation of three buildings in Lithuania, a move the White House condemned.

"If Russia does that -- (like) Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia 1968, here we go again -- Russia in the long run loses," Packwood said. "They'd lose for a long period of time any credibility throughout the bulk of the world."

But he quickly added: "I would not support our putting troops in Lithuania in a fight."

Bush spent much of late last week repeatedly warning Gorbachev against the use of force to quell the unrest.

Packwood said the prophecies of George Kennan, an American diplomat during the Truman administration who developed the policy of containment, are proving true in this time of toppling communist regimes.

"He wrote that if we wait long enough, Russia cannot last," Packwood said of Kennan. "There's not much we can do. This is one of those inevitable strokes of history."