NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - So squarely has investor attention shifted toward figuring out what, exactly, President Bush plans to do to set the economy aright that Tuesday's meeting of the Federal Reserve was little more than an afterthought.

"There was just no reaction," said Jim Volk, director of institutional trading at D.A. Davidson. "Everybody's just looking to what's going to happen in Washington."

With the fed funds target rate already near as low as it can go at 1.25 percent, just about everybody on Wall Street agrees that the job of getting the economy off the ropes has fallen to the government. But as to whether the plan the government eventually hammers out will be what Wall Street wants -- ah, that is an open question.

What Wall Street would like, ideally, is for the economy to be growing at a steady clip while Washington simultaneously chips away at the deficit. Wall Street would also like a pony.

Since Wall Street can't get all those things, it will settle for action that will get the economy going. There are, broadly speaking, two ways the government could try to do that: kick up spending, or cut taxes, the latter being preferred by both the dominant Republicans and by Wall Street.

Breaking it down further, there are two kinds of tax cuts. Some are meant to streamline the tax code, making sure it doesn't, for instance, take away people's incentive to work harder and earn more. Other tax cuts have shorter scopes, and are aimed chiefly kick-starting the economy.

It's that second kind of cut that Wall Streeters think is especially needed now. And if you want to see a tax-cut dollar put into the economy, the thinking goes, you don't give it to somebody like Bill Gates, who isn't likely to up his spending (he's already got everything he needs). Give it instead to middle- or lower-income households, the argument goes -- ironically, exactly the kind of cuts most likely to be championed by Democrats.

"What you really want to do is put money in the hands of the people and businesses that are going to spend it," said Stanley Nabi, managing director at Credit Suisse Asset Management.

But not all the tax-cut ideas getting bandied about in Washington fit into this framework. Accelerating the repeal of the estate tax, for example, would only have a moderately stimulative effect on the economy, notes Friedman Billings Ramsey political analyst Andrew Parmentier. Allowing higher IRA contributions more likely would spur savings than consumption. And cutting the tax on investor dividends -- an idea Wall Street likes -- would mostly affect the well-to-do, since the majority of Americans have most of their money in 401(k)s and IRAs, in which dividends are already sheltered from taxes.

"The administration is calling this a fiscal stimulus package," said Parmentier. "But I'm telling you, there's nothing stimulative about some of the things they want to do."

To be sure, there are some stimulative ideas on the table, including an acceleration of income tax cuts, the repeal of the marriage penalty, an extension of unemployment benefits, a immediate increase in the child tax credit to $1,000 (right now that's slated for 2011), and a temporary suspension of the 12.4 percent Social Security payroll tax. There's also a plan that would increase the rate at which businesses can write off new equipment purchases, which would give companies an incentive to boost capital spending.

But Wall Street worries that not all of that is going to pass, and that tax reform will have more of that first batch of cuts and not enough of the second.

There's another scenario that troubles Wall Street. The White House may use those cuts the Democrats want as bargaining chips to get the things it wants, points out Greg Valliere, managing director at the Schwab Washington Research Group. And while that could get the economy rocking and rolling, it could leave a huge budget deficit in its wake -- something the market may not, ultimately, take kindly to.

"If there's a risk, the cut could really become too big," said Valliere. "It could start to include everything but the kitchen sink."