COLUMBUS (USA): “I know, sir, many of you are going to miss connecting flights. We are doing whatever we can to speed up things here, but some of you will have to reschedule your flights,” an immigration officer at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport politely told a passenger who somehow wanted to jump the slow moving line on Wednesday night.

The passenger in question, just like hundreds of others in the transit queuing up for immigration, was getting a little anxious as he had another flight in less than one hour to take him and his wife to their final destination. Only two immigration desks for ‘visitors with connecting flights’ were functioning.

”We’re facing a 30 per cent budget cut since the new financial year began a month ago, and don’t have enough people to deploy on all the desks,” the officer explained. Still he helped the worried passengers by devoting another desk to speed up the process.

Many passengers succeeded in catching their next flights while others had to stay back in Chicago for the night.

Economy remains a major issue in the US presidential election on Tuesday. “If you watch cable news on any station the day after the election, all you’re going to hear is ‘countdown to the fiscal cliff,’” Erskine Bowles, who co-chaired the fiscal commission that recommended nearly $4 trillion in deficit reduction over 10 years, was quoted by USA Today on Thursday.

Worries of a looming recession occupy the many American voters and economists as “a convergence of tax increases and spending cuts being dubbed as fiscal cliff threatens to throw the slowly healing economy back into recession.

Without action, almost every tax cut enacted since 2001 is set to expire at the end of the year, raising taxes on 90 per cent of Americans, according to the USA Today. The resulting $500 billion tax hike would raise the average American household’s tax burden by $3,500, according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Centre.

The first $110 billion of a planned $1.2 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years to reduce the deficit also begins at the start of the new year.

Reducing the debt and deficits while stabilising the economic recovery remain the most serious challenges for whoever, Barrak Obama or Mitt Romney, wins the presidential race next week.

”You could see (the economy) slowed by 3 per cent next year. You could see as many as two million people lose their jobs. You could see unemployment go to nine per cent,” Bowles warns.

Enacting tax hikes and spending cuts during a slow recovery are all but certain to throw the economy into a recession, given the current 2 per cent growth rate — below the 3 per cent rate most economists believe is needed for an economic rebound.

Also expiring at the end of the year are the tax breaks enacted as part of Obama’s 2009 economic stimulus, including expansion of the child tax credit and earned income tax credit; a temporary payroll tax break; a “patch” on the Alternative Minimum Tax, exposing 26 million taxpayers to higher taxes; and a package of pet tax breaks, including one that encourages charitable giving.

As jobs remain a major concern for an average American, political scientists like Paul A. Beck, professor emeritus at the Ohio State University, say the economy would be an important factor in the presidential race. “Mitt Romeny’s appeal to working class white voters is his promise to increase the number of jobs,” he told a groups of visiting foreign journalists.

The big corporations are obviously supporting Romney as he promises to cut taxes. Professor Beck says the CEOs of some big corporations had written letters their workers that “it is very important for us (the corporations) that Romney wins” (to save jobs) in order to influence voters’ decisions.

”Now this could deliver some working class votes to the Republican candidate because people want to protect their jobs,” the professor says. Coal miners in Ohio, for example, tend to feel that way despite being Democrats historically.

The Ohio Democratic Party too identifies the economy to be a crucial factor influencing the voters’ decisions on the election day and has pinned its hopes on the Obama administration’s efforts in its first term to rescue it. “The major concern of the voters is if they can get up in the morning and go to job and support their families,” the party spokesman, Jarid Kurtz, said.

Indeed, the economic concerns will be a major factor on Tuesday’s outcome. But how much role will they play in determining the final outcome remains a question.