Read my lips: I'll raise your taxes -- a lot.

Thus, paraphrased only slightly, speaks President Bush to Middle America on the campaign trail. Yet far too many of his intended middle-class victims don't seem to hold it against him. Or perhaps they haven't been listening hard enough.

In his speech to the Republican convention, Bush called for a "simpler, fairer, pro-growth (tax) system" and promised to "lead a bipartisan effort to reform and simplify the federal tax code" if he's re-elected.

Noble sentiments to be sure. But anyone who's been paying attention knows that when Bush says "fairer," he means cutting taxes on the rich. When he says "simpler," he means cutting taxes on the rich. And when he invokes economic growth, well, he means tax cuts not just for rich people but for corporations, too.

This time around, however, Bush says that he doesn't plan to put his tax cuts for the wealthy on the national credit card. A "senior administration official" told The Washington Post after the convention that Bush will insist that his tax overhaul plan be "revenue-neutral" -- that is, raise just as much money as current law.

Bush and his aides have dropped a few hints about the specific kinds of tax changes Bush wants to pursue. Speaking at an "Ask President Bush" event, Bush called replacement of most federal taxes with a national sales tax "an interesting idea that we ought to explore seriously." Likewise, at another such campaign forum, Bush called scrapping personal and corporate income taxes in favor of a flat-rate wage tax "certainly one option."

Explaining why Bush believes that both a flat tax and a national sales tax deserve consideration, Bush aides emphasize that Bush likes the fact that such plans would essentially make interest, dividends, profits and capital gains tax-free.

Of course, exempting most of the income of the wealthy from tax and dropping graduated rates in favor of a single tax rate has to be a humongous tax cut for the rich. Since Bush promises no net revenue loss, how much more will everybody else have to pay?

My organization recently ran the numbers on a national sales-tax bill introduced in Congress and found that it would saddle middle- and low-income families with average tax increases of $3,000 to $4,000 a year. We've done studies of the effects of a flat-rate wage tax, with similarly frightening results.

If you don't want to believe me, listen to the original authors of the flat tax (later promoted less honestly by Dick Armey and Steve Forbes), who acknowledged in their 1983 book: "Now for some bad news.... It is an obvious mathematical law that lower taxes on the successful will have to be made up by higher taxes on average people."

You'd think that it might be a political liability to threaten to raise most people's taxes. Yet the presidential candidate most loudly charging his opponent with a plan to boost middle-class taxes is, well, Bush!
Robert S. McIntyre is director of Citizens for Tax Justice in Washington, D.C.