Barack Obama's lining up $1,000 rebates for most American families, wants the IRS to do your taxes for you and is prepared to spend $150 billion remaking the U.S. economy.

Hillary Rodham Clinton will match the first $1,000 families making less than $60,000 put away for the future and give you a tax break on the first grand you spend on college, plus half of the next $5,000.

John McCain? He's ready to double your personal exemption, make sure American corporations don't pay a tax rate any higher than the Chinese do, and give spending in Washington — at least among the items he's not required to fund — a time-out.

On Tuesday, voters in Indiana and North Carolina will cast key ballots to help decide the Democratic nomination. But if the plans touted by the camps are any indication, government's approach to the economy — on taxing and spending, on healthcare, on the way it regulates business and treats workers — is headed for a major shakeup no matter who gets elected.

How big a change?

All the candidates would remake healthcare so much it would be unrecognizable from what we have now. All favor new limits on emissions of greenhouse gasses and creating an auction-house to let the marketplace decide who pays more to emit more, or pays less to emit less.

All three, in one way or another, promise tax cuts, tax credits, government-backed housing loans and protecting American jobs in some fashion from overseas competition.

In other words, they're speaking directly to voters in a state like Michigan, with the highest unemployment rate in the country, a homegrown foreclosure crisis and a major industry — autos — tied directly to the future of greenhouse gas regulation. Many of the same issues are in play in Indiana — another part of the industrial Midwest with automotive roots and a shrunken manufacturing base.

The Hoosier State has lost about 100,000 manufacturing jobs since 2001; Michigan, more than 250,000.

Economists, researchers and analysts who pore over these plans seem to largely agree that no one should confuse campaign promises with guarantees.

Or with the costs of those promises — even the experts agree that until legislation is written and a bureaucratic army of estimators swings into action, the cost of any such proposals is hard to judge.

Instead, economic proposals should be taken as not much more than a way of gauging a candidate's beliefs.

"All of these things should be viewed as what their intentions are," said John Irons, research and policy director of the pro-labor Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.

Or, say the cynical, as a way to get elected.

When Clinton joined McCain last week in calling for a summer suspension of the 18.5-cent federal gasoline tax, Washington gasped. At one event, economists openly wondered what would happen if gas prices didn't drop come fall — would Clinton or McCain actually restore the tax — which pays for the Highway Trust Fund, which funds bridges and roads — two months before the general election?

The suggestion was, emphatically, not.

Said economist Len Burman, director of the Washington-based Tax Policy Center: "There's a lot of pandering and the pandering is bipartisan. ... Every time they open their mouths, they say something stupid."

Even if you buy what the candidates are selling, predicting the outcome of economic plans is much tougher — or at least more politically charged — than it looks.

The Democrats say the wealthy should pay more to fund safety net programs and tax breaks for the middle class; they say getting more money into the hands of people that need it will stimulate the economy.

The Republicans says taxing the wealthy and businesses more slows down the economy. McCain says what the nation needs is real cuts in the government.

(If you make more than $250,000 a year, the Democrats plan to tax you more. McCain, meanwhile, thinks you pay plenty now — and the company you work for should get a break, too.)

Both sides point to the other as wanting to continue failed policies of the past.

Even deciding whether the American economy is in a recession right now is tough. Some say it is, some say it isn't, and others avoid the question at all costs.

What's not up for debate is that the economy has slowed. Since the beginning of the year, 260,000 jobs have disappeared. The Center for Economic and Policy Research says if housing prices keep dropping, the average homeowner could lose what amounts to $85,000 in their home's value this year. And median family income has declined slightly over the past eight years, when adjusted for inflation.

CHANGE WILL BE TOUGH

Presidential policies — or even the election of a new president — could spur growth, or slow it. Typically, stocks rally in a presidential election year.

As for who may be best able to get their policies enacted, that will be more complicated than picking a president, too.

It will come down to working with Congress, and Norm Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has been studying Congress for decades, says that will be tougher than it looks for the new president.

Even if Democrats have a larger majority, it likely won't be large enough to block filibusters in the Senate on major changes in national policy.

A Democratic president, therefore, might enjoy the good wishes of Congress — but still have to reach across the aisle to bring an even-more conservative group of Republicans along to get changes passed. And compromise could alienate liberal supporters.

As for McCain, he would certainly have to compromise with Democrats, who likely will control the House and Senate, to get anything done.