WASHINGTON - Job No. 1 for the next president? In the minds of an overwhelming number of Americans, it's fixing what ails the sick economy. What the voters will have to sort out are very different approaches offered by Barack Obama and John McCain.

Both of their fix-up plans rely heavily on tax cuts, but in sharply different ways that speak to the historic differences between Democrats and Republicans.

McCain, borrowing a page from Ronald Reagan and President Bush, would keep tax rates low for higher-income taxpayers and slash rates for corporations, arguing that this is the way to jump-start a lethargic economy and create more jobs.

Obama, focusing on a theme of many past Democratic campaigns, seeks to target his help to the squeezed middle class and address the growing income inequality between rich and poor. He would retain all of the Bush tax cuts for families making less than $250,000 a year, but would do away with Bush's cuts for people making more than that.

The money raised from tax increases on the wealthy would be redirected by Obama to tax relief for lower-income Americans.

Unlike a lot of campaign debates where the promises of neither side get enacted into law, this war of words will make a difference because all of Bush's tax cuts are scheduled to expire at the end of 2010.

Since neither party wants to go back to the tax rates in effect before 2001, whoever wins will have to work with Congress to pass legislation shaping how the tax code will look beyond 2010. At stake will be billions of dollars.

Under Obama, the wealthiest 1 percent of taxpayers, those making roughly $600,000 or more, would see their taxes go up on average by $93,709 in 2009, according to an analysis done by the Tax Policy Center, because Obama would begin implementing his tax changes even before the scheduled expiration of the Bush cuts.

Under McCain, those same taxpayers would see an average reduction of $48,860, reflecting in part additional cuts he is proposing.

By contrast, the bottom 20 percent of taxpayers, those with taxable income of roughly $19,000 per year or less, would see their taxes cut by an average of $567 under Obama's program and $21 under McCain's plan, the tax center estimates.

For the 20 percent of taxpayers right in the middle of the income scale, making roughly between $37,600 and $66,400, the tax break would be $1,118 under the Obama plan and $325 under the McCain plan in 2009, according to the analysis done by the tax center, a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, two Washington think tanks.

In addition to tax cuts, both presidential candidates are out promising voters a lot of programs in the areas of health care, energy and education.

But the outlook for the federal budget is much darker now than in 2000.