McCain's Gas-Tax Holiday

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Targets Democrats on Taxes

But not all of McCain's proposals offered relief. He also said he would require more affluent people enrolled in Medicare—couples making more than $160,000—to pay a higher premium for their prescription drugs than less wealthy seniors.

He faulted not only Democrats but also fellow Republicans for failing to practice prudent spending and fix pricey entitlement programs. "In so many ways, we need to make a clean break from the worst excesses of both political parties," McCain said, adding "somewhere along the way, too many Republicans in Congress became indistinguishable from the big-spending Democrats they used to oppose."

McCain proposed a cut in corporate taxes, from 35% to 25%. He also argued that Democratic rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton would both impose the single largest tax increase since World War II by allowing tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003—and that McCain voted against but now wants to make permanent—to expire.

"Both promise big change. And a trillion dollars in new taxes over the next decade would certainly fit that description," McCain said. Playing on the title of an Obama book, McCain added: "All these tax increases are the fine print under the slogan of 'hope': They're going to raise your taxes by thousands of dollars per year and they have the audacity to hope you don't mind."

In a prepared statement, Obama campaign spokesperson Bill Burton said McCain's plan "could have been written by the corporate lobbyists who run his campaign, and probably was." He added, "Senator McCain's economic plan offers no change from George Bush's failed policies by going full speed ahead with fiscally irresponsible tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans that John McCain himself once said 'offended his conscience.'"

Clifton, the analyst with Strategas Research Partners, said that while McCain's plan repeats some proposals from the past, it is important because it shows the Republican candidate "communicating with the average American.… This reinforces his key theme. He would be facing a $500 billion deficit and a Democratic Congress. He's not gonna raise your taxes, he will lower your taxes. He will go after spending." And McCain's proposal on student loans could put him ahead on an important pocketbook issue, Clifton said, if students and their parents find over the spring and summer that they can't get college financing.