WASHINGTON – With housing foreclosures growing, the stock market acting like a roller coaster and fears of a recession mounting, the economy is edging its way higher on the list of voter anxieties.

All three leading contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination – Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barak Obama and John Edwards – have offered comprehensive plans to ease the burden of health care on stressed family budgets.

The top Republicans – Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson and John McCain – have promised to crack down on illegal immigration, a source of job insecurity for many middle-class workers.

Bubbling on the back burner is a potentially huge shouting match over a Democratic demand to roll back President Bush's upper-income tax cuts to fund programs that serve broader economic classes versus the GOP's push to make those cuts permanent.

That debate probably won't get really loud until the general election, but it may become the defining economic issue of the campaign. Democrats frame it as a matter of fairness; Republicans argue that low taxes for an affluent investor class is the most efficient route to economic growth.

So far, discussion of economic issues has been largely background noise.

“Iraq is sucking all the oxygen out of the room – everyone is focusing on that,” observed Alan Abramowitz, an expert on electoral politics at Emory University.

The economy looms on the campaign trail. Health care and illegal immigration have emerged as proxies for a broader economic malaise. The list of specific bromides goes on: middle-class tax cuts, protectionist trade policies, crackdowns on job outsourcing, and denunciations of supply-side economics (from Democrats) and tax-and-spend profligacy (from Republicans).

But with economic forecasters scratching their heads over whether we're headed for a recession or continued modest growth, candidates in both parties have not squarely confronted the issue of the economy's overall health, even while engaging in an increasingly partisan debate over taxes.

“In terms of the overall economy, everyone wants to wait and see. No one is sure where we're heading here,” Abramowitz said. “The candidates are reluctant to propose anything very drastic because they're not sure what's going to happen. If we go into a full-fledged recession, you'll see more dramatic proposals.”

With the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates to assuage the uncertainty now clouding the economic outlook, there can be no doubt that voters are growing nervous about their jobs, houses and pocketbooks.

In the past month alone, pollsters say, the souring public mood over the economy has been stark.

“They are hearing the word 'recession' for the first time, and they're hearing it over and over,” said pollster John Zogby. “The public mood is not just dark. What's darker than dark? The mood is getting ugly.”

But, he acknowledged, “There isn't an economic bumper sticker yet.”