For months, political analysts and strategists have argued that Republican presidential candidate John McCain needed a more developed economic program to match the extensive policy prescriptions he 's outlined on Iraq and other national security issues. Until recently, McCain 's economic program consisted largely of a call to extend the Bush tax cuts.

On April 15, in a broad-ranging economic speech in Pittsburgh, McCain called for several highly targeted tax cuts and federal spending initiatives. Included was a summer gas-tax holiday that would suspend the 18.4-cent federal gas tax and 24.4-cent diesel tax.

The speech followed one five days earlier in Brooklyn, N.Y., in which McCain also called on the Bush administration to stop adding to the country 's strategic petroleum reserve, in hopes of easing pressures on sky-high gas and oil prices.

In his April 15 speech at Carnegie-Mellon University, McCain urged Congress to institute a "gas-tax holiday " from Memorial Day to Labor Day.