I'm so happy to see Senator McCain pushing more ill-considered policies.  Resuming his gas-tax-holiday promotion, McCain raises some questions about how and why this would work.

There is no excess supply of gasoline - we buy all the gas that's available for sale.  There is little incentive for competition between gas retailers, which is why gas prices vary so little between filling stations.  Sure, labor costs, real-estate values, local/state regulations, and local/state taxes play a role.  But once you account for those disparities, there's not much left - prices are pretty flat.

So eliminating the federal gas tax may change the cost of gas for people selling gas, but it may not lower prices at the pump.  With oil prices fluctuating every day, and worldwide demand continuing to increase, prices will be hard to predict.  Maybe the gas retailers, small and large, will take the tax holiday as a little more margin for themselves, or maybe the oil refiners will raise their gas prices a bit (market conditions?) to offset the gas-tax discount.

Let's say we get a gas tax holiday for six months.  Will it affect prices at all?  Probably not.  And that would be fairly horrible for all concerned.  Gas tax holiday proponents would be ridiculed, oil companies would be demonized, and the federal government would be out several billion dollars in revenue. 

But our government, makers and enforcers of laws, some-time arbiter of the market, could lock in the savings.  The feds - in this case, Congress - could set gas prices.  Leaving aside whether or not this is a good idea, it is an implicit element in this gas tax holiday theory.  How else could one guarantee savings for the average gas consumer?  Should we have a gas tax holiday and just hope for lower gas prices?  Last time I checked, hope is not a plan. 

Surely Senator McCain has more behind his gas tax holiday proposal than meaningless pandering, right?  He's a man of substance/character/integrity/steel/heroism/profanity/etc, his gas tax holiday must be legit.

So, in the language of the proprietor, when will the campaign press start asking McCain if he is in favor of price controls on gasoline to insure savings for consumers?  How would those price controls be enforced?  And why does he want to bring Soviet-style, command-economy policies to the United States - didn't we win the Cold War?