WASHINGTON, Oct 2, 2008 (AFP) - Barack Obama or John McCain will soon inherit America's worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, but both White House hopefuls insist their most cherished policy goals will stay intact.

After the November 4 election, either the Democrat Obama or Republican McCain will have to shoulder a scary mix of Wall Street despondency and Main Street distress when one or other succeeds President George W. Bush in January.

After eight years of hefty tax cuts and war spending, Bush will bequeath a monster budget deficit, a canyon-sized trade imbalance and an overall economy that may be staring at recession after 600,000 job losses so far this year.

Will Obama still be able to afford his pledge of cutting taxes for 95 percent of working Americans? Will McCain have the money to sustain Bush's tax cuts for high earners and still spend 10 billion dollars a month in Iraq?

Both candidates admit that the next administration will have to tighten its belt in view of the growing fiscal nightmare. But both are vague about what policy priorities might have to be jettisoned.

'With less money flowing into the Treasury, some useful programs or policies that I've proposed on the campaign trail may need to be delayed,' Obama said in Wisconsin Wednesday.

'But there are certain investments in our future that we cannot delay, precisely because our economy is in turmoil,' the Illinois senator said, likening the economy today to a house whose roof is crumbling.

For Obama, those long-term repairs include universal healthcare, investment in creaking schools and roads, and a renewable energy drive to break America's addiction to oil from the Middle East and other hotspots.

The Democrat says his programs are fully costed, stressing that higher taxes on the rich, ending the war in Iraq and scrapping foreign tax dodges worth 100 billion dollars to companies would yield enormous savings by themselves.

And like Bush, Obama argues the 700-billion-dollar economic rescue package now going through a tempestuous debate in Congress could pay for itself, if distressed mortgages bought by the government turn a profit in years to come.

But in the immediate future, the upfront costs of the bailout and the likelihood of waning tax revenues from a slowing economy, combined with higher spending on things like unemployment insurance, portend fiscal stress ahead.

McCain vows to unleash pent-up economic forces to both revitalize growth and redress the budget deficit, which now stands at an eye-popping 483 billion dollars compared to a surplus when Bill Clinton left the White House in 2001.

The Republican would slash capital gains tax, cut through regulatory red tape and take an ax to federal spending -- including nearly 18 billion dollars' worth of congressional 'earmarks' for lawmakers' pet projects.

'We must also realize that this rescue plan has serious implications for future spending,' McCain said Wednesday in Missouri.

It was impossible now to 'go right back to business as usual in Washington -- as if there were no end to the resources of government or to the patience of taxpayers,' the Arizona senator said.

But McCain too has costly goals that he says are non-negotiable -- starting with securing peace 'with honor' in Iraq, rebuilding the stretched armed forces and achieving energy independence.

Whatever the candidates say now, however, all could change come inauguration day next January 20. Obama strategist David Axelrod warns the next administration might arrive in the White House to find 'the cupboard is bare.'

Clinton had plenty of ideas in the 1992 campaign but when he took office, deficit reduction became the first order of business. The parallels to now are striking, especially given that Obama has two of Clinton's Treasury secretaries -- Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers -- in his economic brains trust.

'This election is very much akin to the '92 election. And in some ways the economy is in much worse shape today,' said Michael Walden, a professor of economics and public policy at North Carolina State University.

'Even before the financial crisis, the candidates were making promises that they would have problems delivering on,' he told AFP. 'This will dramatically constrain the next president on what he can do on the fiscal side.'